... across the hard surfaces of the rocks
The homes of men and the hearts of men—
In the one as in the others, lies, imposture and misery.
As I urged in The Nature of Man, consciousness of the shortness of human life has been an important factor in exciting pessimism, and we find this theme recurring in pessimistic writers. Leopardi returns to it again and again in his poems. “Falling in peril of death from some mysterious disease,” he said in his Souvenirs, “I lamented over my sweet youth and the flower of my poor days which was to fall so soon, and often in the midnight hours wove from my sorrows, by the pale light of my lamp, a sad poem, and in the silence of the night wept over my fleeting life, and half fainting, sang to myself my funeral song” (loc. cit., p. 28). The bas-relief on an ancient tomb, representing the departure of a young girl who took farewell of her friends, suggested to Leopardi the following thoughts: “Mother, who from their birth makes her family of living beings tremble and weep, Nature, monster unworthy of our praise, who brings into the world and nurtures only to kill, if the premature death of a mortal be evil, why do you bring it on so many innocent heads? If it be a good, why do you make it sad for those who go and for those left behind? Why is it the hardest grief to console? The only relief from our woes is death, death, the inevitable end, the immutable law which you have established for human beings. Why, alas, after the sad voyage of life, do you not make the arrival joyful? This certain end, this end which is in our souls all our lives, which alone can soothe our troubles, why do you drape it in black and surround it with mournful shades? Why do you make the harbour more terrible than the open seas?” (loc. cit., p. 55).
The three chief grievances—injustice, disease, and death—often come together. From the anthropomorphic point of view fate is represented as a sort of wicked being who commits injustice by visiting all kinds of evils on mankind.
A pessimistic conception of life is arrived at by a complex psychological process in which both feelings and reflection are involved, and hence it is difficult to analyse it satisfactorily. Formerly, therefore, writers were content with general and very vague estimates of the process by which we may become pessimists. Ed. von Hartmann has tried to deal more exactly with this inner process of the human mind. In the first place, he lays stress on the fact that pleasures always bring less satisfaction than pains bring grief. False notes in music, for instance, are more painful than the best music is delightful. The pain of toothache is much more violent than the pleasure when relief comes. So also with all diseases. In love, according to Hartmann, the pleasure is always very greatly over-balanced by the pain. Muscular work brings pleasure only in a very small degree, and devotion to science and art and intellectual work in general brings more pain than pleasure to the votaries. As the result of an analysis, Hartmann is convinced that there is much more pain than pleasure in the world. Pessimism is founded upon the essential nature of human feelings.
M. Kowalevsky,[181] a German philosopher at Koenigsberg, adopting the modern habit of measuring mental processes as exactly as possible, has recently published an attempt to analyse pessimism psychologically. Although this has not solved the problem, it is extremely interesting as an instance of the application of the methods now being adopted in modern psychology.
M. Kowalevsky took advantage of all the known methods of estimating the relative values of our emotions; he tried to make use of the notes of Munsterberg, another living psychologist who kept a journal in which he set down daily his psychical and psycho-physical impressions. The object of the work had no relation to the question of pessimism, and for that reason Kowalevsky thought that it was specially important in his investigations.
Munsterberg was not content with the existing classification of emotions as agreeable or painful. He subdivided them much further. He recognised, for instance, emotions of tranquillity and excitement, serious and pleasant impressions. Having completed the reckoning, Kowalevsky came to the conclusion that his colleague, who was by no means a pessimist, but a psychologist of well-balanced mind, experienced many more painful emotions (about 60 per cent. as compared with 40 per cent.) than agreeable emotions. “Such a result is in favour of pessimism,” concluded Kowalevsky.
However, he went beyond the foregoing enquiry. By several other methods, he tried to gain an exact idea of the value of our emotions. He visited elementary schools in order to investigate the pleasures and pains of the scholars. In the case of 104 boys, of eleven to thirteen years of age, he found that pain was much more deeply felt than corresponding pleasure. Thus, while in 88 cases illness was set down as an evil, only in 21 was health reckoned as a good. One-third of the pupils noted down war amongst evils, whilst only one noted peace amongst the good things. Poverty was written down thirteen times as an evil, against twice in which riches were put down as a good. In another series of investigations, Kowalevsky took notes on the pleasures and pains felt by pupils of the two sexes attending the same school. The result was that the greatest evil, according to them, was illness, noted 43 times, then death 42 times, after which came fire 37 times, hunger 23 times, floods 20 times. Amongst the good things, the first place was given, as might have been expected, to games (30) and the second to presents.