In general, however, the conduct of men towards each other is characterised as a rule by injustice, extreme unfairness, hardness, nay, cruelty: an opposite course of conduct appears only as an exception. Upon this depends the necessity of the State and legislation, and upon none of your false pretences. But in all cases which do not lie within the reach of the law, that regardlessness of his like, peculiar to man, shows itself at once; a regardlessness which springs from his boundless egoism, and sometimes also from wickedness. How man deals with man is shown, for example, by negro slavery, the final end of which is sugar and coffee. But we do not need to go so far: [pg 389] at the age of five years to enter a cotton-spinning or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing the same mechanical labour, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. But this is the fate of millions, and that of millions more is analogous to it.
We others, however, can be made perfectly miserable by trifling misfortunes; perfectly happy, not by the world. Whatever one may say, the happiest moment of the happy man is the moment of his falling asleep, and the unhappiest moment of the unhappy that of his awaking. An indirect but certain proof of the fact that men feel themselves unhappy, and consequently are so, is also abundantly afforded by the fearful envy which dwells in us all, and which in all relations of life, on the occasion of any superiority, of whatever kind it may be, is excited, and cannot contain its poison. Because they feel themselves unhappy, men cannot endure the sight of one whom they imagine happy; he who for the moment feels himself happy would like to make all around him happy also, and says:
“Que tout le monde ici soit heureux de ma joie.”
If life were in itself a blessing to be prized, and decidedly to be preferred to non-existence, the exit from it would not need to be guarded by such fearful sentinels as death and its terrors. But who would continue in life as it is if death were less terrible? And again, who could even endure the thought of death if life were a pleasure! But thus the former has still always this good, that it is the end of life, and we console ourselves with regard to the suffering of life with death, and with regard to death with the suffering of life. The truth is, that the two inseparably belong to each other, for together they constitute a deviation from the right path, to return to which is as difficult as it is desirable.
If the world were not something which, expressed practically, ought not to be, it would also not be theoretically [pg 390] a problem; but its existence would either require no explanation, inasmuch as it would be so entirely self-evident that wonder concerning it or a question about it could arise in no mind, or its end would present itself unmistakably. Instead of this, however, it is indeed an insoluble problem; for even the most perfect philosophy will yet always contain an unexplained element, like an insoluble deposit or the remainder which the irrational relation of two quantities always leaves over. Therefore if one ventures to raise the question why there is not rather nothing than this world, the world cannot be justified from itself, no ground, no final cause of its existence can be found in itself, it cannot be shown that it exists for its own sake, i.e., for its own advantage. In accordance with my teaching, this can certainly be explained from the fact that the principle of its existence is expressly one which is without ground, a blind will to live, which as thing in itself cannot be made subject to the principle of sufficient reason, which is merely the form of the phenomenon, and through which alone every why is justified. But this also agrees with the nature of the world, for only a blind will, no seeing will, could place itself in the position in which we behold ourselves. A seeing will would rather have soon made the calculation that the business did not cover the cost, for such a mighty effort and struggle with the straining of all the powers, under constant care, anxiety, and want, and with the inevitable destruction of every individual life, finds no compensation in the ephemeral existence itself, which is so obtained, and which passes into nothing in our hands. Hence, then, the explanation of the world from the Anaxagorean νους, i.e., from a will accompanied by knowledge, necessarily demands optimism to excuse it, which accordingly is set up and maintained in spite of the loudly crying evidence of a whole world full of misery. Life is there given out to be a gift, while it is evident that every one would have declined such a gift if he could have seen [pg 391] it and tested it beforehand; just as Lessing admired the understanding of his son, who, because he had absolutely declined to enter life, had to be forcibly brought into it with the forceps, but was scarcely there when he hurried away from it again. On the other hand, it is then well said that life should be, from one end to the other, only a lesson; to which, however, any one might reply: “For this very reason I wish I had been left in the peace of the all-sufficient nothing, where I would have had no need of lessons or of anything else.” If indeed it should now be added that he must one day give an account of every hour of his life, he would be more justified in himself demanding an account of why he had been transferred from that rest into such a questionable, dark, anxious, and painful situation. To this, then, we are led by false views. For human existence, far from bearing the character of a gift, has entirely the character of a debt that has been contracted. The calling in of this debt appears in the form of the pressing wants, tormenting desires, and endless misery established through this existence. As a rule, the whole lifetime is devoted to the paying off of this debt; but this only meets the interest. The payment of the capital takes place through death. And when was this debt contracted? At the begetting.
Accordingly, if we regard man as a being whose existence is a punishment and an expiation, we then view him in a right light. The myth of the fall (although probably, like the whole of Judaism, borrowed from the Zend-Avesta: Bundahish, 15), is the only point in the Old Testament to which I can ascribe metaphysical, although only allegorical, truth; indeed it is this alone that reconciles me to the Old Testament. Our existence resembles nothing so much as the consequence of a false step and a guilty desire. New Testament Christianity, the ethical spirit of which is that of Brahmanism and Buddhism, and is therefore very foreign to the otherwise optimistic spirit of the Old Testament, has also, very wisely, linked [pg 392] itself on precisely to that myth: indeed, without this it would have found no point of connection with Judaism at all. If any one desires to measure the degree of guilt with which our existence is tainted, then let him look at the suffering that is connected with it. Every great pain, whether bodily or mental, declares what we deserve: for it could not come to us if we did not deserve it. That Christianity also regards our existence in this light is shown by a passage in Luther's Commentary on Galatians, chap. 3, which I only have beside me in Latin: “Sumus autem nos omnes corporibus et rebus subjecti Diabolo, et hospites sumus in mundo, cujus ipse princeps et Deus est. Ideo panis, quem edimus, potus, quem bibimus, vestes, quibus utimur, imo aër et totum quo vivimus in carne, sub ipsius imperio est.” An outcry has been made about the melancholy and disconsolate nature of my philosophy; yet it lies merely in the fact that instead of inventing a future hell as the equivalent of sin, I show that where guilt lies in the world there is also already something akin to hell; but whoever is inclined to deny this can easily experience it.
And to this world, to this scene of tormented and agonised beings, who only continue to exist by devouring each other, in which, therefore, every ravenous beast is the living grave of thousands of others, and its self-maintenance is a chain of painful deaths; and in which the capacity for feeling pain increases with knowledge, and therefore reaches its highest degree in man, a degree which is the higher the more intelligent the man is; to this world it has been sought to apply the system of optimism, and demonstrate to us that it is the best of all possible worlds. The absurdity is glaring. But an optimist bids me open my eyes and look at the world, how beautiful it is in the sunshine, with its mountains and valleys, streams, plants, animals, &c. &c. Is the world, then, a rareeshow? These things are certainly beautiful to look at, but to be them is something quite different. Then comes a teleologist, and praises to me the wise [pg 393] arrangement by virtue of which it is taken care that the planets do not run their heads together, that land and sea do not get mixed into a pulp, but are held so beautifully apart, also that everything is neither rigid with continual frost nor roasted with heat; in the same way, that in consequence of the obliquity of the ecliptic there is no eternal spring, in which nothing could attain to ripeness, &c. &c. But this and all like it are mere conditiones sine quibus non. If in general there is to be a world at all, if its planets are to exist at least as long as the light of a distant fixed star requires to reach them, and are not, like Lessing's son, to depart again immediately after birth, then certainly it must not be so clumsily constructed that its very framework threatens to fall to pieces. But if one goes on to the results of this applauded work, considers the players who act upon the stage which is so durably constructed, and now sees how with sensibility pain appears, and increases in proportion as the sensibility develops to intelligence, and then how, keeping pace with this, desire and suffering come out ever more strongly, and increase till at last human life affords no other material than this for tragedies and comedies, then whoever is honest will scarcely be disposed to set up hallelujahs. David Hume, in his “Natural History of Religion,” §§ 6, 7, 8, and 13, has also exposed, mercilessly but with convincing truth, the real though concealed source of these last. He also explains clearly in the tenth and eleventh books of his “Dialogues on Natural Religion,” with very pertinent arguments, which are yet of quite a different kind from mine, the miserable nature of this world and the untenableness of all optimism; in doing which he attacks this in its origin. Both works of Hume's are as well worth reading as they are unknown at the present day in Germany, where, on the other hand, incredible pleasure is found, patriotically, in the most disgusting nonsense of home-bred boastful mediocrities, who are proclaimed great men. Hamann, however, translated these [pg 394] dialogues; Kant went through the translation, and late in life wished to induce Hamann's son to publish them because the translation of Platner did not satisfy him (see Kant's biography by F. W. Schubert, pp. 81 and 165). From every page of David Hume there is more to be learned than from the collected philosophical works of Hegel, Herbart, and Schleiermacher together.
The founder of systematic optimism, again, is Leibnitz whose philosophical merit I have no intention of denying although I have never succeeded in thinking myself into the monadology, pre-established harmony, and identitas indiscernibilium. His “Nouveaux essays sur l'entendement” are, however, merely an excerpt, with a full yet weak criticism, with a view to correction, of Locke's work which is justly of world-wide reputation. He here opposes Locke with just as little success as he opposes Newton in the “Tentamen de motuum cœlestium causis,” directed against the system of gravitation. The “Critique of Pure Reason” is specially directed against this Leibnitz-Wolfian philosophy, and has a polemical, nay, a destructive relation to it, just as it is related to Locke and Hume as a continuation and further construction. That at the present day the professors of philosophy are on all sides engaged in setting Leibnitz, with his juggling, upon his legs again, nay, in glorifying him, and, on the other hand, in depreciating and setting aside Kant as much as possible, has its sufficient reason in the primum vivere; the “Critique of Pure Reason” does not admit of one giving out Judaistic mythology as philosophy, nor of one speaking, without ceremony, of the “soul” as a given reality, a well-known and well-accredited person, without giving account of how one arrived at this conception, and what justification one has for using it scientifically. But primum vivere, deinde philosophari! Down with Kant, vivat our Leibnitz! To return, then, to Leibnitz, I cannot ascribe to the Théodicée, as a methodical and broad unfolding of optimism, any other merit than this, that it gave occasion later for [pg 395] the immortal “Candide” of the great Voltaire; whereby certainly Leibnitz's often-repeated and lame excuse for the evil of the world, that the bad sometimes brings about the good, received a confirmation which was unexpected by him. Even by the name of his hero Voltaire indicates that it only requires sincerity to recognise the opposite of optimism. Really upon this scene of sin, suffering, and death optimism makes such an extraordinary figure that one would be forced to regard it as irony if one had not a sufficient explanation of its origin in the secret source of it (insincere flattery, with insulting confidence in its success), which, as was mentioned above, is so delightfully disclosed by Hume.
But indeed to the palpably sophistical proofs of Leibnitz that this is the best of all possible worlds, we may seriously and honestly oppose the proof that it is the worst of all possible worlds. For possible means, not what one may construct in imagination, but what can actually exist and continue. Now this world is so arranged as to be able to maintain itself with great difficulty; but if it were a little worse, it could no longer maintain itself. Consequently a worse world, since it could not continue to exist, is absolutely impossible: thus this world itself is the worst of all possible worlds. For not only if the planets were to run their heads together, but even if any one of the actually appearing perturbations of their course, instead of being gradually balanced by others, continued to increase, the world would soon reach its end. Astronomers know upon what accidental circumstances—principally the irrational relation to each other of the periods of revolution—this depends, and have carefully calculated that it will always go on well; consequently the world also can continue and go on. We will hope that, although Newton was of an opposite opinion, they have not miscalculated, and consequently that the mechanical perpetual motion realised in such a planetary system will not also, like the rest, ultimately come to a standstill. Again, under the firm [pg 396] crust of the planet dwell the powerful forces of nature which, as soon as some accident affords them free play, must necessarily destroy that crust, with everything living upon it, as has already taken place at least three times upon our planet, and will probably take place oftener still. The earthquake of Lisbon, the earthquake of Haiti, the destruction of Pompeii, are only small, playful hints of what is possible. A small alteration of the atmosphere, which cannot even be chemically proved, causes cholera, yellow fever, black death, &c., which carry off millions of men; a somewhat greater alteration would extinguish all life. A very moderate increase of heat would dry up all the rivers and springs. The brutes have received just barely so much in the way of organs and powers as enables them to procure with the greatest exertion sustenance for their own lives and food for their offspring; therefore if a brute loses a limb, or even the full use of one, it must generally perish. Even of the human race, powerful as are the weapons it possesses in understanding and reason, nine-tenths live in constant conflict with want, always balancing themselves with difficulty and effort upon the brink of destruction. Thus throughout, as for the continuance of the whole, so also for that of each individual being the conditions are barely and scantily given, but nothing over. The individual life is a ceaseless battle for existence itself; while at every step destruction threatens it. Just because this threat is so often fulfilled provision had to be made, by means of the enormous excess of the germs, that the destruction of the individuals should not involve that of the species, for which alone nature really cares. The world is therefore as bad as it possibly can be if it is to continue to be at all. Q. E. D. The fossils of the entirely different kinds of animal species which formerly inhabited the planet afford us, as a proof of our calculation, the records of worlds the continuance of which was no longer possible, [pg 397] and which consequently were somewhat worse than the worst of possible worlds.
Optimism is at bottom the unmerited self-praise of the real originator of the world, the will to live, which views itself complacently in its works; and accordingly it is not only a false, but also a pernicious doctrine. For it presents life to us as a desirable condition, and the happiness of man as the end of it. Starting from this, every one then believes that he has the most just claim to happiness and pleasure; and if, as is wont to happen, these do not fall to his lot, then he believes that he is wronged, nay, that he loses the end of his existence; while it is far more correct to regard work, privation, misery, and suffering, crowned by death, as the end of our life (as Brahmanism and Buddhism, and also genuine Christianity do); for it is these which lead to the denial of the will to live. In the New Testament the world is represented as a valley of tears, life as a process of purifying or refining, and the symbol of Christianity is an instrument of torture. Therefore, when Leibnitz, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and Pope brought forward optimism, the general offence which it gave depended principally upon the fact that optimism is irreconcilable with Christianity; as Voltaire states and explains in the preface to his excellent poem, “Le désastre de Lisbonne,” which is also expressly directed against optimism. This great man, whom I so gladly praise, in opposition to the abuse of venal German ink-slingers, is placed decidedly higher than Rousseau by the insight to which he attained in three respects, and which prove the greater depth of his thinking: (1) the recognition of the preponderating magnitude of the evil and misery of existence with which he is deeply penetrated; (2) that of the strict necessity of the acts of will; (3) that of the truth of Locke's principle, that what thinks may also be material: while Rousseau opposes all this with declamations in his “Profession de foi du vicaire Savoyard,” a superficial Protestant pastor's philosophy; as he also in the same spirit [pg 398] attacks the beautiful poem of Voltaire which has just been referred to with ill-founded, shallow, and logically false reasoning, in the interests of optimism, in his long letter to Voltaire of 18th August 1756, which is devoted simply to this purpose. Indeed, the fundamental characteristic and the πρωτον ψευδος of Rousseau's whole philosophy is this, that in the place of the Christian doctrine of original sin, and the original depravity of the human race, he puts an original goodness and unlimited perfectibility of it, which has only been led astray by civilisation and its consequences, and then founds upon this his optimism and humanism.