CHAPTER VIII

ATTEMPTS IN SYSTEMS OF PHILOSOPHY TO REMEDY THE ILLS ARISING FROM THE DISHARMONIES OF THE HUMAN CONSTITUTION

Some philosophical systems are in intimate union with religions—Ideas of ancient philosophers on the immortality of the soul—The teaching of Plato—The scepticism of Aristotle—The Stoics—Cicero, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius—Modern philosophical systems—Pessimism and its origin—Lord Byron—Theories of Schopenhauer and Hartmann—Mailaender’s philosophy of deliverance—Criticisms of pessimism—Max Nordau—Ideas of modern thinkers on death

Systems of philosophy are closely attached to religious doctrine. Buddhism, for instance, originated in a philosophic theory which acquired a religious character in the hands of the followers of Buddha. Similarly, many systems of philosophy are merely religious dogmas which it has been attempted to support by rational argument apart from supernatural revelation.

The idea of life beyond the grave has long since furnished one of the principal bases of various philosophic doctrines, the ultimate object of which was to solve the problem of death. Ancient philosophy is full of such. Plato describes the tragic death of his master Socrates, and in connection with it expresses very clearly his ideas upon death. He puts these words in the mouth of Socrates in the “Phaedo”: “Far from being depressed by the death of a friend, I felt, on the contrary, that he was to be envied; as I witnessed his attitude, and listened to his words, and noticed the courage with which he faced death, I became convinced that he did not quit this life without some divine support that drew him towards another world in which he would find the most perfect happiness man could wish.”

Plato attributes to Socrates a very definite view as to future retribution: “In truth,” said Socrates, “if I did not expect to find in another life gods at once good and wise, and men better than those of this life, it would be foolish of me not to be disturbed by the approach of death. But I know that I look to finding myself among just men. I do not fear to die, because I am confident that something still remains after this life, and that, according to the old belief, the good will be treated better than the bad.”

As such views were not derived from a body of revealed truth, it was necessary to support them by reasoning. Plato therefore went on to try to convince us of the immortality of the soul by speculative hypotheses. He recalled the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis, and suggested that the souls who had abandoned themselves to injustice, tyranny, and plunder would pass into the bodies of wolves and hawks and falcons, for souls of that nature could not go elsewhere; while the souls of those who had practised the social and civic virtues known as temperance or justice, would inhabit the bodies of peaceful and gentle creatures such as bees and ants, or would even enter other human bodies and again become good men.

Plato referred also to the law of contrasts in support of his theory. “As the most strong often springs from the feeblest, or the most swift from the slow, so life gives rise to death, and from death life springs.” “From that which is dead,” said Socrates, “is born all that lives and has life. And so our souls after death pass to the infernal regions.” “As we must grant that the dead are born from the living as much as the living from the dead, it is plain that the souls of dead men exist somewhere, whence they may return to life.”

By such arguments Plato tried to prove the immortality of the soul, the fundamental basis of his philosophy, and put them in the mouth of his master Socrates on his deathbed. In the dialogue he tried to refute all kinds of objections. But, in spite of the assurance with which he formulated his doctrine, there may be seen underlying the argument a note of doubt, and it is just this that distinguishes philosophy from religion.

It is evident that the whole of Plato’s system was the result of an effort to solve the problem of death. Again and again he said that the true philosopher lived only to be ready to die; that being so, he declared it to be childish for men at the last to shrink from what they had so long been making ready for. It was himself that Plato wished to convince of a future life. “I do not seek,” he said, “to persuade all those who are here of the truth of what I say, although to do so would greatly please me; what I aim at is to convince myself. Behold me, dear friend, in pursuit of an argument that, as you see, interests me deeply; if what I say turns out to be true, it is good to have believed it, and if there be nothing after death, at least I have gained this, that while I am still with you, I am not borne down with grief.”

The doubt which was only latent in Plato was much more active in some other ancient philosophers. Aristotle[210] at one time admitted that part of the soul was immortal, but that the other part was mortal. The two parts came together at the beginning of a life and separated at its end. Later on, however, Aristotle abandoned this theory of the immortality of the personal consciousness, and argued strongly against the Platonic theory of the immortality of the soul, although, however, he still believed in the indestructibility of the “rational spirit,” an immortal principle.

The Stoics still further developed such a conception. They held that besides the individual soul there was a universal soul, a presiding influence in which all others had their being.

Cicero, again, discussing old age and death, tried to establish belief in a future life. “I am convinced,” said Cicero to Scipio and Laelius, “that your illustrious fathers, who were so dear to me, are still full of life, and of the only life worthy of the name; for the body is, as it were, our prison-house, within which we must accomplish the tasks laid on us by necessity. When I think of the activity of the human spirit, its vast memory, its prevision, its store of art and knowledge, and experience, I am convinced in the depths of my being that an existence with such qualities cannot be mortal. The soul is continually active, and its activity comes not to it from without; the soul is a self-supporting activity, and cannot come to an end. Moreover, as the soul is a simple substance, unalloyed by any mixture of materials, it can neither be divided nor made to perish.” By such arguments Cicero sought to prove the immortality of the soul. “I will tell you,” he said, “why old age, so far from being grievous to me, is full of delight.” But in the end, he himself saw the weakness of his proof, and the note of scepticism appeared in him more strongly than in his predecessors, so that he came to say as follows: “If I am deceived as to the immortality of the soul, I am deceived gladly, and I would not have the belief torn from me while I live. If, when I am dead, all feeling is arrested within me, as some pretended philosophers hold, at least I have not to fear that after my death they will come and mock me for my error.”

Scepticism becoming more and more definite, belief in the immortality of the soul persisted only in the purely religious form. Philosophical systems freed themselves of it, and replaced it by a vague form of pantheism.

Seneca tried to support the thesis of immortality, but one gets the impression strongly that there was no vigour in his belief. He is content with poetry rather than with reason. “The events of this mortal life,” he wrote in one of his celebrated “Letters,” “are the mere prelude of a better and more lasting existence. As our mother’s womb, bearing us for nine months, shapes us not to live there for ever, but for our place in this world in which it places us, with the strength to breathe this air and to withstand surrounding things: so, also, the time that passes from our infancy to our old age is a preparation for a second birth. Another beginning and another world await us. Until then, we could not endure, save from afar, the splendour of the heavens. Learn then, O man, to face without a shudder the decisive hour, the last hour of the body, but not of the soul. What you see around you consider but as the furniture of an inn; soon you are going further on. The day that you dread as your last day is your birthday into immortality.”

In the midst of these glowing visions, however, Seneca is assailed by dark and gloomy thoughts. “Yes,” he cried, “all that is must perish; death comes to every living thing. Every day, every hour, reveals to man the coming of death; there is always some new lesson to remind him of the fragility he had forgotten, and from a dream of eternity to turn his thoughts to the grave.”

These heights and depths of spirit led Seneca towards a new theory in which he gave a final expression of his views on the great problem of human existence. “All beings pass through definite stages; they must be born, grow and die. The stars that we see revolving above us, the earth on which we are carelessly scattered and which seems to us so solid; all is threatened and all will come to an end. Old age comes on everything; although the period is very different, the same end comes to everything. Everything that now is will cease to be; but for all that the world will not perish; it will dissolve. Dissolution is destruction for us. As a matter of fact we think of things only as they concern ourselves; our degenerate soul, incapable of detaching itself from the body, sees nothing beyond that; none the less we should endure the idea of the death of ourselves and of those near to us with a greater fortitude were we to realise that nature is a constant routine of birth and death, that all composite bodies must dissolve, that the dissolved substances reform, and that the creative power of God displays itself in this cycle of change throughout the universe.” From such a final conception of the universe he draws the consolation: “A great soul should know how to obey God and submit willingly to the order of the universe. If it be not for a better life that we are to quit this life, if not to find a home in the skies more tranquil and more brilliant, our souls, free from suffering, will return to the spirit that gave them birth and will mingle in the great all.”

In other words, abandoning the image of life after death that played so consoling a part in primitive beliefs, philosophy became content to advocate resignation to the inevitable laws of nature, and to console itself with the promise of a vague return to some universal, eternal principle.

The conceptions of the Stoics, especially in the form presented by Seneca, found an ardent and brilliant exponent in Marcus Aurelius, whose “Thoughts” are known to all the world. He had much to say of the problem of death and of the attitude of the philosopher towards it. “Death,” said Marcus Aurelius, “like birth, is one of nature’s mysteries. In the two are present the same elements: in the one case in the phase of combination, in the other in that of dissolution.” In death “there is nothing repugnant to the essence of an intelligent being, nor to the general plan of our nature.” But his ideas on death were vague. “Death may perhaps be a dispersal or resolution into atoms, or an annihilation in the sense of extinction or deplacement.” “Alexander of Macedon and his mule-driver were reduced at death to the same condition, that is to say they returned alike to the originating principle of the universe, or one and the other were scattered as atoms.”

Although he was definitely a deist, Marcus Aurelius was undecided as to the immortality of the soul. “If souls have not disappeared,” he said, “how can the air contain the eternal generations of them?” “Remember well,” he said in another place, “that that feeble and composite creature, your soul, will one day resolve into its atoms; the faint spark of life will be extinguished, or be assigned to some other dwelling-place.” Clearly enough, there was no consoling hope of a future life to be derived from these halting dubieties. It was needful to replace by some other anodyne the belief that for so long had brought comfort to poor humanity.

Marcus Aurelius tried to counteract the fear of death by the following reflection: “To fear death is to fear either being deprived of all feeling or being subjected to some other kind of feeling. But, if we are deprived of all feeling, we shall have no evil to fear; if we are to find new kinds of sensations, our existence will be different, but still existence.” However, he probably realised the weakness of such a consolation, for he tried to link the problem of death with the general principles of human conduct.

As I mentioned in the first chapter of this volume, Marcus Aurelius, like many of the philosophers of antiquity, held the view that man ought to live according to the dictates of human nature. The theory recurs again and again in his “Thoughts.” “The fig tree lives according to its kind, the dog like the dog, bees like bees, and man like man.” He expresses this view still more emphatically in the following words: “Man must live in conformity with the laws of his nature.” “No one will prevent you from living according to the laws of nature, and nothing can happen to you that is not in accordance with nature’s universal law.” “Neither hand nor foot can do that which is contrary to the laws of nature, because the foot can only fulfil the functions of the foot, and the hand those of the hand. Similarly with man, to behave as a man is not to defy nature’s laws, because it is only fulfilling the functions of man. And that which is not against nature cannot be evil.”

Being full of this theory, Marcus Aurelius applied it to death, which, being a natural phenomenon, was to be accepted without protest. “For, after all, nature forges the links and nature breaks them. Is she about to sever them? Very well, let us then say farewell as if we were taking leave of our friends, but let there be no tearing of the heart strings, and let us go willingly, and so avoid being dragged away. This, too, is in accordance with the laws of nature.” “Philosophy,” according to Marcus Aurelius, “is to await death peacefully, and to regard it as merely the dissolution of the elements which compose the human frame. Such is the law of nature, and whatever is in conformity with nature is not evil.”

Death, being a phenomenon in conformity with nature, must be submitted to. “Do not abuse death,” advises Marcus Aurelius, “but accept it with resignation, as being in accordance with the will of nature. Do we not pass on from infancy to youth, grow up, and become tall and attain manhood? Do not our teeth come, our beards grow, and our hair turn white? If we marry, do we not beget children? Are not all such events in their due season, and the work of nature? Death comes through the same agency. It therefore behoves a wise man to approach death with neither anger, repugnance, nor contempt, but to await it like any other operation of nature.” _Resignation_, then, is what this form of philosophy amounts to. Not only must death be accepted as inevitable when it comes after a long life, but even if it surprise us at an unexpected time. “He who dies after reaching the uttermost limits of human life,” says Marcus Aurelius, “has reached no further than he who comes to a premature end. It is the same in the end, whether there are a hundred years to look back upon, or whether there are only three.”

In his book on Marcus Aurelius, Renan[211] compares his philosophy of resignation with the Nirvâna of the Buddhists. “Like Jesus, Çakya-Mouni, Socrates, Francis of Assisi, and three or four other wise men, Marcus Aurelius was victor over death. He could laugh at it, because it had no longer any meaning for him.” But, just as the theories of Buddha became transformed into a religion which promised the immortality of the soul, and as Nirvâna gave way to the Paradise of the Easterns with its delights, so the sceptical resignation of ancient philosophy was vanquished by Christianity with its promises of a future life and immortality.

Thus, in the course of the centuries, philosophy has been drowned in the floods of sentiment and of religious notions, and it has been a labour of Sisyphus to restore reason to humanity. There is the less need to follow the stages of this resurrection, as, in the end, they come to little. For long, philosophical systems set themselves the task of supporting the dogmas of religion by arguments independent of divine revelation. The gods were replaced by philosophy or by matter, and an effort was made to solve the eternal and disquieting problem of death by proving the immortality of the soul.

The philosophers of the early renaissance of human thought accepted the chief religious dogmas as established truth. Plotin regarded the immortality of the soul as a self-evident truth that required no proof. He argued against a resurrection of the body, but accepted the transmigration of souls.

Although Spinoza had given up the conception of the immortality of the soul in the ordinary sense, he accepted the Aristotelian idea that “the human spirit could not be destroyed absolutely with the body, but left some eternal remnant.” Death, in his view, was a kind of eternal life, a merging with the absolute, a return to the immortal and universal substance.

Philosophers have exhausted themselves in the study of the foundations of human knowledge with the sole object of demonstrating the truth of religious dogmas. In spite of his scepticism, Kant tried to prove the genuineness of human knowledge, and to found on that a conviction of the future life and of the existence of God. Fichte set himself the same task, but he was forced to recognise that “immortality cannot be deduced from natural phenomena,” and that it “is supernatural.” “Although we cannot understand the possibility of eternal life, it still may be possible, for it transcends human knowledge.” Hegel reached a pantheistic conclusion and believed in the human soul being re-absorbed by the absolute.

These idealistic systems, when they reached their final point, provoked a reaction consisting in the rejection of all formulas based on speculation. They were succeeded by a dogmatic materialism, which in its turn gave place to a sceptical positivism, or rather to a form of agnosticism. Granted the impossibility of belief in the immortality of the soul or in eternal life in any shape, the philosophy regarding death was reduced to the stoical idea that our end is in harmony with the laws of nature, and that it must therefore be accepted without protest. Resignation, therefore, in the fullest sense of the word, became the watchword of human wisdom.

It was only to be expected that certain courageous and independent thinkers should not agree with this conclusion, and attempt to discover some other solution of the great problem absorbing mankind. Thence arose pessimism, the philosophic theory which became so prevalent during the last century, and which claims so many adherents in the present day. Pessimism, like belief in the immortality of the soul and the advocacy of resignation to the evils which beset humanity, is the product of the East, and India was probably its nursery. A pessimistic view of life is a salient feature of Brahminism, but Buddhism develops even more fully the doctrine that everything of this world is evil. That “life is made up of suffering” is the inexhaustible theme which, whether in the shape of philosophical argument, or in the more attractive form of poetry, the Buddhist Scriptures din ceaselessly in our ears.[212]

In Europe, the lyrical poets introduced the pessimistic conception of the world, attracted by its emotional appeal. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Byron struck this sad note, and expressed the view in the clearest fashion, that if we weighed our hours of joy against our days of pain, we should perceive clearly that whatever our life had been it were better not have been. In the following lines his conception of life is apparent:—

“Our life is a false nature,—’tis not in The harmony of things, this hard decree, This uneradicable taint of sin, This boundless Upas, this all-blasting tree,

Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be The skies, which rain their plagues on men like dew— Disease, death, bondage—all the woes we see— And, worse, the woes we see not—which throbs through The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new.” “EUTHANASIA.”

In chap. vi. I showed that Byron was haunted by a fear of death which ultimately led him to a recognition of the instinctive character of the feeling. He, however, like the other pessimistic poets (Leopardi), did not regard the world as being merely part of a universal system, and it was left to philosophy to come to this conclusion.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, Schopenhauer endeavoured to give a presentation of a pessimistic theory, borrowed from Hindoo religions and from the views of contemporary poets, in the form of a rational philosophy. He developed a conception of life according to which “existence is to be regarded as something one is better without, as a kind of mistake which should be remedied when recognised.”[213] According to Schopenhauer existence is wrong, and results from the gratification of unrestrained desire. “If an attempt be made to realise the amount of misery, pain, and evil of all kinds, that the sun shines upon in its daily course, it will be seen how much better it would be were the earth to exhibit as few phenomena of life as the moon, and if the surface of the earth were in a similarly crystallised condition. Human life might equally be interpreted as a useless disturbance of the exquisite tranquillity of nothingness,” the meaning of the disturbance being wrapped in impenetrable mystery.[214]

This melancholy state of life was the result of the cosmic process, which has created so much evil, and which finally evolved the human species, capable of feeling and appreciating to the full the pain of the world. The lower animals he regards as happier than man, their senses being less fully developed, and being unconscious of the worst aspects of their existence. In man, pleasure is purely a negation, whereas the sensation of pain is passive, contemplation, a human monopoly, rendering suffering still more unbearable. “Man’s capacity for pain increases far more with the passage of time than does his capacity for enjoyment, and is especially increased by his foreknowledge of death. Animals only fear death from instinct, without having any real knowledge of it, and without having the prospect of it always before their eyes, as is the case with human beings.”[215] Schopenhauer was convinced that happiness should not be regarded as the aim of life. “The greatest mistake we can make,” he said in his principal work,[216] “is to imagine that we are placed here to be happy.” “So long as we continue in this erroneous view which optimistic doctrines serve to foster, the world will continue to seem a mass of contradictions to us.” “It would be nearer the truth to regard pain as the aim of life rather than pleasure.” “The destiny of all human existence seems to be suffering. Life is wrapped about with evil, and cannot be protected from it. Life, at its very beginning, is signalised by tears, its course is fundamentally tragic, and still more tragic is its end. It is impossible to ignore that all this is meant to be.” “Death is the real goal of life. Its attainment brings a solution of all that has gone before.”

The prospect and expectation of death, being products of reason, are experienced by men and not by animals. “Only in the case of humanity is the will capable of renouncing and withdrawing from life.”

What is the answer to all these contradictions and the explanation of a cosmic process which on the one hand leads but to death, and on the other hand develops the intelligence so as to enable it to fear and dread the inevitable end? Is the solution to be found in belief in the immortality of the soul, supported as it is not only by nearly every form of religion, but by numerous systems of philosophy? Schopenhauer devotes many pages to the discussion of this question. He neither supports the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, nor the immortality of the conscious soul. “Just as the individual has no memory of prenatal existence, so after death he will remember nothing of his present life.”[217] “Those who regard birth as the actual beginning of man’s life must necessarily face death as final, the two being parallel. No man can therefore regard himself as immortal without forfeiting his belief in his own birth. Birth and death have the same origin and the same significance. They represent but one line, extending in opposite directions. If birth implies an origin from nothingness, then death must be complete annihilation.”[218]

There is no such thing as individual immortality. But, according to Schopenhauer, to desire such immortality would merely be to advocate “the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake. Each individual existence is a definite mistake, a blunder, something that would better not have been, and the object of existence should be to end it.”[219]

But if man, as an individual, is mortal, “death only takes away what was given by birth, that is to say, the principle by which death itself became possible.”[220] “Consciousness ceases at death, but the cause which produced that consciousness persists; life comes to an end, but not the principle which became manifest by life.”[221]

What then is this immortal principle? It is the idea of the species or genus. Men or dogs, as individuals, perish in due course, but the human species or the canine species, the man “idea” or the dog “idea,” endures. Here Schopenhauer reverted to the conception of Spinoza, who, indeed, denied the immortality of the soul, but none the less believed in the immortality of the principle of life. This everlasting principle, according to Schopenhauer, is the will in its widest and most metaphysical sense, while, on the other hand, the mortal soul is the reason, a product of the functions of the brain.

The eternal principle of life cannot be defined, because “we cannot pass outside the limits of our consciousness. And thus the problem of what it is in itself cannot be resolved.”[222]

Schopenhauer himself recognises that this solution of the problem is not satisfactory from the point of view of those who desire reassurance of their immortality. “But,” he continues, “it is better than nothing, for those who dread death from the point of view of absolute annihilation should not despise the certainty of the persistence of the most vital principle of life.”[223] He further remarks that it must be remembered that nature is interested only in the preservation of the species, being indifferent to the individual. We ourselves being only a part of nature ought to further its plans. “If we wish to attain to a wider knowledge of nature, we must place ourselves more in sympathy with it, and regard life and death indifferently.”[224] Schopenhauer himself feels that his theories and arguments are unsatisfactory. When he had reached the full development of his doctrine, he admitted that it was negative in character, and that it ended in negation. It spoke only of what it had to deny and of what ought to be abandoned. It was obliged to regard as nothingness all that could be acquired in the future. As a consolation, he added that he meant relative nothingness, and not absolute nothingness.

As an ultimate aim, there remained nothing but abrogation of the will to live, and thus misery and wretchedness, which are the inseparable accompaniments of human life, led to resignation.

As our life is no more than a succession of misfortunes, and as, according to Schopenhauer, death is the plain conclusion of philosophy, the end of the individual life must be pleasant. As a general rule, he said, the death of a well-regulated life is calm and peaceful. But the privilege of dying willingly, with joy and delight, is reserved for him who has learned resignation, and has abolished and abandoned his will to live. For such an one would be willing to die in reality, not merely in appearance, and would neither desire nor claim a personal immortality. He would give up readily the existence that we know. Whatever may replace that existence is nothing from the point of view of individuality. The Buddhistic faith called the position attained by him who had given up the will to live, “Nirvâna, or nothingness.”[225]

The natural deduction from this pessimistic doctrine of Schopenhauer would be to abolish the will to live by abolishing our individual life by suicide. But such is not the advice of the philosopher. He is far, however, from agreeing with those who regard suicide as criminal.[226] He merely does not admit that it solves the question. “He who commits suicide destroys the individual only, and not the species.” “Suicide is the voluntary destruction of a solitary phenomenon, without in the smallest degree affecting the system as a whole.”[227]

The will to live manifesting itself, according to Schopenhauer, by the creation of new individuals, the philosopher would naturally, in accordance with his views of life, abstain from bringing others into the world. Schopenhauer lived and died a bachelor, and, so far as I am aware, had no children. On the other hand, convinced that the solution of life’s problem did not lie in suicide, he clung tenaciously to life. Having relinquished a belief in the immortality of the soul, he fell back upon a belief in the persistence of some ultimate principle, apart from conscious life, and held that in resignation and desire for annihilation (Nirvâna, according to his interpretation of the Buddhist doctrines) lay the true consolation for all the evils of human existence.

For a long time Schopenhauer’s views found no echo in the opinions of other thinkers. Later, however, they became more and more widely diffused, and philosophic pessimism became quite fashionable. Those who did not adopt the metaphysical principles of Schopenhauer’s philosophy agreed with his views on life and on the impossibility of happiness.

Exactly half a century after the publication of Schopenhauer’s principal work,[228] another German philosopher, E. Hartmann,[229] went a step further in the same direction. Without agreeing wholly with his metaphysics, he shared Schopenhauer’s views on the impossibility of regarding happiness as the true aim of existence. In order to demonstrate this theory, he examined the three phases of illusion through which mankind passes. He held that, in the first phase, people imagined happiness to be attainable during the present life. However, all that have been regarded as the sources of joy—youth, health, desire, conjugal love, family love, glory, etc.—end in disillusion. Love itself is especially submitted to Hartmann’s implacable criticism. According to him, there can be no question but that “love causes far more suffering than pleasure to those concerned.”[230] “It cannot be doubted,” he says, “that reason would prompt a total abstention from love,” and, as a means to this end, he recommends “the extinction of sexual desire by castration, if that could be relied upon to destroy desire.”[231] That, according to Hartmann, “is the only possible means of securing the happiness of the individual.” It is at the sacrifice of his personal happiness that man permits himself to love, and so abets the evolution of the cosmic process.

“When they have become convinced of the impossibility of obtaining happiness in this world, people persuade themselves that it may be obtained after death in a transcendental life in another world. This, however, is only a second phase of illusion, and is based upon faith in life after death and eternity. It is certain, however, that the individuality of the organic body as well as that of the mind is only a delusion which ceases with death.”[232] Hartmann says in conclusion that “it is therefore plain that the hope of the immortality of the individual soul is also a mere illusion. And thus the chief support of the Christian promises is cut away; for men are devoted to their dear selves, and take little interest in a future happiness in which they themselves are to have no share.”[233]

Being disillusioned regarding the possibility of obtaining happiness in this world, or in a future state, humanity falls back upon a third illusion. Firmly convinced that the aim of life is true happiness, man concluded that it was only attainable in some future state of the cosmic process. This hypothesis is based upon belief in a system of progressive development. “This,” declares Hartmann, “is yet another mistake. Humanity may progress as much as it likes,” he says, “but it will never succeed in suppressing or even diminishing the greatest evils which beset it: disease, old age, dependence on the wishes or the power of others, misery and discontent. Notwithstanding the new remedies which are discovered, the number of diseases, especially those of a chronic nature which are so trying, continues to increase at a rate that medicine cannot keep pace with. Joyous youth will always constitute a small portion of humanity, while the greater part will consist of melancholy old age.”[234]

Against this idea that the happiness of the race will be the eventual result of progress, Hartmann employs the following arguments: “The happiest people are those who are the rudest and most primitive, and, among civilised races, the uneducated classes. It is well known that the progress of education increases discontent. The progress of science contributes little or nothing to the absolute happiness of the world. Practically speaking, this progress is of advantage to politics, social life, morality, and the arts; but factories, steam-boats, railways, and telegraphs, have so far done no positive good to humanity.”[235] Hartmann frequently recurs to the conclusion that the primitive are happier than the civilised, and that “the lower classes, inferior and rude, are happier than the rich who are well educated and great; that idiots are happier than the intelligent, and that, as a general rule, the less sensitive a man’s nervous system may be, the happier he is, as his capacity for feeling pain is not so much in excess of his capacity for enjoyment, and his illusion is therefore greater. With the progressive development of humanity, however, not only is there an increase in the extent of human needs, but in the sensitiveness of the nervous system, and in the cultivation of the mind. In consequence, the balance of pain over pleasure increases, and the illusion is destroyed, that is to say, knowledge comes of the misery of life, of the vanity of most of the pleasures. Misery itself increases as much as knowledge of misery, as experience has shown; and the apparent increase of happiness in the world, due to the progress of universe, is merely superficial.

Having reached this extremely pessimistic conclusion, that it is impossible for humanity to attain happiness, Hartmann proceeds to inquire into the real destiny of man. He would be no true philosopher if he did not hold that the world was created according to a general plan, and that it follows a regular course tending towards a definite end. “We have seen,” he says, “how that in the present world all has been arranged in the wisest, and for the most part the best way, and that it should therefore be regarded as the best possible of worlds. Notwithstanding this, however, it is supremely miserable, and worse than if it did not exist at all.”

Being convinced of the illusory nature of its hopes, humanity “must definitely renounce all pretensions to positive happiness, and aspire only to a freedom from pain, to annihilation or Nirvâna. This, however, must not be merely the attitude of solitary individuals, but humanity at large must cry out for annihilation. This is the only possible outcome of the third and last phase of illusion.”

By what means is this end to be attained? Hartmann is no advocate of suicide as the best remedy of the evils of human existence. Upon this point he agrees with Schopenhauer, and thinks that such a course would have no effect upon the general progress of the cosmic process. A renunciation of pleasure—asceticism—would present no better solution of the problem. Even abstinence from reproduction would not serve the purpose. “What good would it do,” says Hartmann, “if humanity were to cease to be by means of sexual abstinence? This unfortunate universe would continue to exist, and the Unconscious would immediately take advantage of the opportunity to create a new man or some other similar type.”[236] Thus it is not the disappearance of mankind that should constitute our aim, but “the complete abandonment of the individual to the cosmic process, in order that the latter may accomplish its end and bring about the universal deliverance of the world.”[237] This being so, the instinctive love of life reasserts itself, and it becomes necessary to admit, at least as provisional truth, “the validity of the will to live; for it is only by complete resignation to life and its troubles, and not by cowardly renunciation and abandonment, that one may contribute one’s share in the development of the cosmic process.”[238]

Hartmann’s proposed solution of the problem of human existence belongs undoubtedly to the category of systems advocating resignation. He is unable to tell us what is the cosmic process to which he bids man lend all his forces. He advises humanity to continue to live and to multiply in the full certainty that happiness cannot be attained. Hartmann obviously demands a true renunciation and an absolute submission. His solution has the appearance of being more exact, and of furnishing a guide to human conduct more clear than that vague aspiration to Nirvâna proposed by Schopenhauer. But on closer investigation it becomes at once plain that the greater precision is illusory.

It is easy to see, under such circumstances, that a school of criticism or negation of the pessimistic doctrines should have gained many adherents. Very few, on the other hand, have embraced pessimistic doctrines because of any power being inherent in them to resolve the difficulties of life. A German pessimistic philosopher, Mailaender,[239] shared fully Schopenhauer’s opinions as to the misery of human life, but opposed the latter’s doctrine of resignation and Nirvâna as the solution of the general problem of life. Mailaender accepted the three stages of human illusion as expounded by Hartmann, but attacked vigorously the view of facilitating the cosmic process by acquiescence in the will to live. “Indeed,” he cried, “your advice is that we should sacrifice ourselves to the cosmos, we are to choose a career, to learn a trade, acquire money, property, fame, power, and so forth; we are to marry and to beget offspring; by such advice you are merely undoing with your own hands the sole merit of your work, the analysis of illusion. You suddenly advise the very man who has got behind all these illusions to succumb to them again, as if an illusion, although it has been recognised, could still deceive and exercise its power.”[240]

Mailaender takes an entirely different view of the problem. Like his predecessors, he is convinced of the futility of happiness, but he has achieved an original view of the cosmic process. He holds that an unaccountable and divine Being existed before the creation of the world. Before disappearing “this divinity gave birth to the universe.” By this means, complete annihilation was made possible. “The world,” says Mailaender, “is but the means for bringing about a condition of non-existence, and is the only possible means by which that end could be attained. God knew that only by creating a real world could we pass from existence into non-existence.” Maileander regards as certain “that the universe tends towards universal non-existence.”[241] This tendency is characterised by the weakening of the total amount of energy, so that “every individual at the close of the weakening process to which his energy is submitted, is led in the course of his development to the point at which his desire for annihilation may be fulfilled.”[242] Life on our planet, he says, ought to be regarded as a halting-place on the road to death. In order to appreciate fully the happiness brought by death, it is necessary first to taste of life, and that is why the instinct of self-preservation is so well developed in animals. Man passes first through a phase of development in which he is like any other animal. “As with them, the will to live is stronger than the will to die. Life is clung to with extreme pertinacity, and death is proportionately execrated.” “At first, not only the fear of death increases, but equally the love of life.” Terror of death becomes acuter. Animals, knowing nothing of death, only fear it instinctively through their perception of approaching danger. Man, on the contrary, knows of the existence of death and what it means. He looks back on his past life and wonders what the future may hold in store, and realises, infinitely more than animals realise it, the dangers that threaten him. During this phase, man does all in his power to keep death at bay, and to make his life as happy as possible. This, however, is not the last stage of his development. The thinking man soon comes to the conclusion that a craving for life is not the true aim of the universe; it is only the means for attaining to a knowledge of the definite aim of existence, which is the cessation of life. Philosophy soon shows that perfect happiness is not possible, and that only death is really desirable. In summing up the cosmic process, the conclusion arrived at is “that throughout the universe the desire of death exists in a form more or less masked, but that in the organic world this assumes the form of a will to live.”[243] In the end, however, the desire of death becomes more and more plain, until the philosopher can see “in the whole universe nothing but a longing for absolute extinction, and fancies that he can hear the cry rolling from star to star, ‘Deliverance, deliverance, death to our life!’ and the echoing cry of consolation, ‘Extinction and deliverance await you all!’”[244]

In order to explain in a clearer way the progress of this evolution, Mailaender describes the state of mind of a man who develops the will to die, and commits suicide. “At first he glances anxiously and from afar at death, and shrinks from it with horror. Later, he draws nearer and walks round it in wide circles. Day by day, however, these circles become smaller, until finally he embraces Death with weary arms and looks it straight in the face. Then Peace comes; gentle Peace!”[245]

It is absurd to expect anything to follow death but absolute annihilation, and the ordinary man faces this prospect with terror. “But it is essential,” says Mailaender, “that man should dominate the universe by knowledge, and wise men look forward to total annihilation with joy.”[246] “In relinquishing Schopenhauer’s will to live,” concluded Mailaender, “I have finally arrived at the will to die. I have raised myself upon the shoulders of Schopenhauer, until I have attained a point of view such as others have never accomplished. At present I am alone, but behind me all humanity is pressing on to freedom; and before me is the clear translucent vista of the future.”[247]

I have quoted these views, not because of the solidity of Mailaender’s arguments, but merely because this pessimistic philosopher proved himself to be more consistent than his predecessors. While Schopenhauer and Hartmann, both so firmly convinced of the non-existence of happiness and the vast preponderance of suffering in all imaginable conditions of life, lived out their lives, Mailaender, true to his principles, committed suicide when barely thirty-five years of age.

This is probably not a solitary instance. Under the influence of pessimism, a certain number of young persons, especially those whose mental equilibrium is not very firmly established, follow in the tragic footsteps of Mailaender. Some commit suicide, while others abstain from taking part in the perpetuation of the race. Others, but these are not many, curtail their existence by dissipation, thinking life not worth the care of it.

A modern writer of great talent, Maeterlinck, echoes the pessimism of the present generation. “It is plain,” he says,[248] “that from one point of view humanity will always seem wretched, and as though being dragged towards a fatal precipice, since it will ever be doomed to disease, to the inconstancy of matter, to old age and to death.” “Yes, human life as a whole is sad, and it is easier, I may almost say pleasanter, to discuss and expose its dark side, than to enumerate its consolations and make the best of them. The miseries of life are many, obvious, and never failing; whereas the consolations, or rather the reasons which cause us to fulfil with alacrity the duty of living, are rare, hard to seek, and precarious.”

Although pessimism has been greatly developed and widely spread during the nineteenth century, dissentient voices in opposition to this negative attitude towards the things of this world have not been wanting. Take the views of the German poet, Robert Hammerling,[249] who reproaches the pessimistic philosophers with ignoring the attitude of mind of the majority of mankind who ask but one thing,—life—life at any price and under any conditions. Against this sentiment all dogmatic arguments are useless, for, according to Hammerling, the question of pleasure and pain is a matter of feeling and not of reason. Now, with regard to the general feeling of humanity, there can be no doubt—it is frankly optimistic.

Max Nordau, the well-known writer, supports a similar theory. According to him, all living nature betrays its optimistic foundation. “The truth is,” he says, “that optimism, limitless and irradicable optimism, constitutes the fundamental attitude of man, and is the instinctive feeling which governs him under all circumstances. All other forms of life confirm this truth....” “All nature,” according to Max Nordau, “by the bells of flowers and the throats of her birds, rings and proclaims the truth of optimism.” “No animals feel the pain of the world; and our own ancestor, the contemporary of the cave bear, was certainly free from all anxiety relating to the destiny of the human race.”

These arguments do not take into account that, to be true, pessimism need not necessarily be felt and agreed with by all living creatures. Birds and other animals, happy in their lives, that is to say optimists, know nothing of the inevitability of death. Our cave ancestors knew nothing of it either. If the greater portion of modern humanity is optimistic, that might be accounted for by its being still under the influence of one of the three phases of illusion alluded to by Hartmann. It is only when the highest stage of development is reached that man, being convinced of the futility of his hopes, arrives at a pessimistic conception of the universe.

Max Nordau disclaims discipleship of Doctor Pangloss, who held that the world is the best of all possible worlds. But his arguments reveal a pronounced optimism. He regards pain as an indispensable factor of the maintenance of life. “Without pain,” he says, “our lives would not endure an hour, for we should be unable to recognise dangerous symptoms and guard against them.” Insensibility to pain is often so grave a symptom that sick people rejoice when they are again able to feel the prick of a needle.

This is true enough, but none the less the feeling of pain is very erratic in both animals and human beings. Quite insignificant causes and unimportant illnesses, such as certain forms of neuralgia, give rise to unbearable agony. A physiological phenomenon such as childbirth is often attended by extremely violent pain which is absolutely useless as a danger-signal. On the other hand, some of the most dangerous diseases, such as cancer or kidney disease, may exist for a long time without causing any sensation of pain, with the result that the sufferer knows nothing of the presence of the disease until it is too late. Were pain to play the part assigned to it by Nordau, it would appear in all cases of danger, and yet would never become almost unbearably acute.

But when men have passed through the three stages of illusion it is not physical pain which presses most heavily on them. Max Nordau himself admits that it is “appalling to think of the cessation of our consciousness, and the annihilation of our ego.” None the less, he believes “that we are so happily constituted as to be able to accept the really inevitable with a light heart, and that there is no ill feeling about the matter.” This admission is not in accordance with the well-established facts discussed in chap. vi. With very rare exceptions man does not willingly accept the prospect of death, especially if he be still under the influence of illusion in any of its three stages. As a rule those who desire to live feel not only a repugnance to the contemplation of death, but death seems to them something abnormal and irrational. It is no answer to assert that all who feel this are psychopaths, or that it is absurd to think that the happiness of mankind counts for something in the cosmic process. On the contrary, it is quite natural that man should seek after happiness, and that he should try to analyse the phenomena taking place within him and around him from the point of view of that ideal. For this reason it is quite unjust to say that pessimism cannot be treated seriously. It is pessimism which has been the first to draw up a true indictment of human nature, and if pain is to be regarded as useful in its quality of danger-signal we should equally recognise that the pessimistic view of the universe is a step onwards in the evolution of humanity. Without pessimism we might easily sink into a kind of contented fatalism, and end in quietism, in the manner of many religions.

It is only natural, however, that the thinking world should not accept pessimism as the last word of human wisdom, and that more or less noted philosophers should devote themselves to finding a possible solution of the problem of life and death. These systems of philosophy, one and all, have abandoned readily all belief in future life and personal immortality. But they have adopted pantheistic conceptions, and have accepted the existence of some general principle into which the individual consciousness will eventually be absorbed. There is division of opinion as to the properties of this principle. For some it is the Idea, for others Will, for others Force, or Eternal Energy.[250] The nomenclature is the less important as the views as to the nature of the general principle are absolutely vague. Accordingly this part of the philosophic doctrines appears in a lyrical form and has passed over into the domain of poetry.

German poets have helped to spread pantheistic conceptions very widely. I need hardly mention Goethe, whose ideas were purely those of Spinoza, but Schiller’s well-known lines are precise:—

“Vor dem Tode erschrickst Du? Du wünschest, unsterblich zu leben? Leb’ im Ganzen! Wenn du lange dahin bist, es bleibt!”

“Do you shrink from approaching Death? and crave immortality? Live on in the All! Long after you vanish the All will remain!”

Rückert, in lines almost equally well known, expresses the same idea:—

“Vernichtung weht dich an, so lang Du Einzles bist. O, fühl’ im Ganzen dich, das unvernichtbar ist.”

“Annihilation fills you with terror, because you are self-centred. You must feel your unity with the All, which is indestructible.”

A volume might be filled with the attempts of thinkers of different countries to present these poetical ideas in a form less vague and more philosophical. I shall select only a few of the more modern instances.

Renan’s[251] ideas may be taken as typical of the compromise between poetry and philosophy. Speaking of immortality, he said “that we shall each live again by the traces we leave on the bosom of the Infinite.”[252]

The views elaborated by Guyau[253] are equally poetic. Like so many others he is unable to accept without protest the prospect of the inevitability of death. Brought face to face with this end, he declares that he feels “not sorrow but indignation, as against an injustice of nature.” “It is with justice,” he cries, “that we look on nature as a murderess if she kills what is morally best in ourselves and in others.”[254]

It is chiefly in the name of love that Guyau protests against death: “The death of others, the annihilation of those we love, is insupportable to men, who are essentially thinking and loving creatures.”[255]

This problem, so vast and so difficult to solve, is presented by him as follows: “As regards the question of individual immortality, human thought is dragged in opposite directions by two great forces—science, in the name of evolution, prepared to sacrifice the individual completely; love, in the name of an evolution, morally and socially higher, which would preserve the individual at all hazards. There is no more disturbing dilemma proposed to the philosopher.”[256]

Guyau hopes that in the course of evolution there will come about a merging of individual consciousness in the consciousness of the whole. “One may ask,” he says, “if it may not be that these conscious entities mingling and interpenetrating, may come to live on from one to the other, and so to acquire a new duration?” On such a hypothesis he can foresee “an epoch not, indeed, certain to come, but far from inconceivable, in which individual consciousnesses will have achieved a corporate integrity and a complex intercommunion, without themselves being lost by the union.”[257]

On this hypothesis, “the problem is to be at the same time loving enough and loved enough to live and endure in another.[258]... Those who vanish and those who remain must love one another so greatly that the shadows cast by them on the universal consciousness are identical.” “We should then feel ourselves passing and ascending from this life to an immortality of love,” and “the point of contact between life and immortality would be discovered.”[259]

A solution recently offered by Finot[260] is much less poetical. According to him, it is only “when death is conceived of as annihilation that it is repugnant. On the other hand, if we regard it merely as a change of life, we shall cease to fear it, and even come to love it.”[261]

But what is this “change of life” that is to prove so consoling? It is the “immortality of the body,” that is to say, the life of the creatures developed at the expense of the human body. “Flies begin the work of the labourers on the dead,” giving birth to worm-like larvæ that writhe in the decomposing flesh. The same vermin that horrified Tolstoi when he thought of his own death (see chap. vi. p. 123) became Finot’s symbol of consolation. He describes the whole succession of the fauna of corpses, and concludes by saying, “and so goes on the routine of life, from birth to the tomb, of noisy, clamorous life, ceaselessly renewed. Ever loving, giving birth, living and dying. The peace of the tomb is as filled with life as the dust into which we think our bodies will fall.”[262]

I have given the above quotation as an instance showing to what lengths men have gone in their search for a solution of the problem of death and in their desire for a gleam of hope that the end may not be final. I need not say that this idea of the fauna of the corpse has no place in the philosophy of death. Thinkers, no doubt, would prefer the most vague ambiguities to certainties of such a nature. Most contemporary philosophers regard the problem in a very different fashion.

In my opinion, Meyer-Benfey, a scholar at Göttingen, has summed up the present condition of the problem very clearly and exactly, in essays on Modern Religion.[263] He realises that it is impossible to accept the immortality of the soul. Personality must utterly and inevitably perish. But, just as no single atom of our bodies can be annihilated, so “no parts of our souls can be lost.” Our actions during life leave traces so much the deeper as the life has been fuller. It is this reuniting “of the actions of individuals with the life of the whole of humanity, that constitutes the true immortality or Nirvâna.” He says, too, “In accustoming our minds to this thought, and in educating ourselves with a view to the accomplishment of this end, lies the only possible means of overcoming the fear of death and the terror of annihilation.”

Meyer-Benfey is of the pessimistic opinion that happiness cannot possibly be regarded as the supreme end of humanity, for he thinks, if that were so, the whole course of evolution would have been a mistake. It would have been much better had evolution been arrested before the creation of the human race, since animals, being unaware of the inevitability of death, are undoubtedly happier than man. As, however, we have passed through the animal stage and reached the human stage, and achieved some measure of civilisation, and this not by our own desire, or as the result of mere chance, but guided by the inner workings of our nature, it is plain that the ultimate goal towards which we are advancing, must be some other than mere happiness. There can be no question but that the goal is the triumph of pure and perfect culture.

This idea, that the goal of humanity is progress in all its manifestations, is no recent theory, and many definitions of this progress have been advanced, but so far none have been generally accepted as satisfactory. The term “culture,” though vague, will have to continue in use until some better word conveying a more precise meaning is found to replace it.

On reviewing all the systems of philosophy which have attempted so strenuously to solve the problem of individual death, it becomes plain that all, or nearly all, of them deny the existence of a future life and the immortality of the soul. The greater part of them, however, admit some general principle incomprehensible but eternal, which will eventually incorporate within itself all individual souls. Feeling that these vague ideas are incapable of conveying consolation to poor humanity in its fear of annihilation through death, philosophers have persistently taught the advantages of resignation. Even Guyau, realising that his philosophy regarding the immortality of love fails to reassure those who look to philosophy for some word of consolation, ends by admitting that “as there is no help to be expected from the inexorable, nor mercy from that which is in conformity with the universe and even with our own judgment, resignation is best.”[264] As it is the general opinion that to be philosophical is to take things as they are, without undue protest, the watchword of all systems of philosophy is to bow to the inevitable, that is to say, to be resigned to the prospect of annihilation.

PART III WHAT SCIENCE IS ABLE TO DO TO ALLEVIATE THE DISHARMONIES OF THE HUMAN CONSTITUTION