Even the little we can know is not inspiriting. Take our fellow-men, their ways and works, for instance, and what do we behold? Their own evil-doing, injustice, and violence, drag them down to the level of the brute; and that this is their natural level is obvious, if we bear in mind that the end of men is that of the beasts of the fields,[97] and that the ruling power within them, the mechanism, so to say, of these living and feeling automata is love of life. Consider men at their best—when cultivating such relative "virtues" as industry, zeal, diligence in their crafts and callings, and we find these "good" actions tainted at the very source: love of self and jealousy of others being the determining motives.[98] In any case we see that work is no help to happiness, for it is too evident that toil and moil—even that of the writer himself, who knows full well that he is labouring for a stranger—is but the price we pay, not for real pleasure, but for carking care and poignant grief.[99] Such being the bitter fruits of knowledge, the tree on which they flourish is scarcely worth cultivating.
Wisdom in its ethical aspect, as a rule of right conduct, is unavailing as a weapon to combat the Fate that fights against man. Nay, it is not even a guarantee that we shall be remembered by those who come after us, and whose lot we have striven to render less unbearable than our own. The memory of the dead is buried in their graves,[100] and the wheels of the vast machine revolve as if they had never lived. For a man's moral worth goes for nothing in the scale against Fate, whose laws operate with crushing regularity, unmodified by his virtues or his crimes.[101] Indeed, if there be any perceptible difference between the lot of the upright and that of the wicked, it is often to the advantage of the latter, who are furthered by their fierce recklessness and borne onwards by ambition.[102] The knowledge of this curious state of things serves but to encourage evil-doers.[103] The obvious conclusion is that instead of fighting against Fate which is unalterable—"I discovered that whatever God doeth is forever"[104]—we should resign ourselves to our lot and draw the practical inference from the fact that life is an evil.
Wisdom in its practical aspect is equally unpromising. In no walk of life is success the meed of merit or victory the unfailing guerdon of heroism.[105] Such wisdom as is within man's reach is often a positive disadvantage in life, owing to the modesty it inspires as pitted against the self-confidence of noisy fools. Besides, should it contrive to build up a stately structure, a small dose of folly, with which all human wisdom is largely alloyed, is capable, in an instant, of undoing the work of years.[106] In a word, the wise man is often worse off than the fool; and in any case, no degree of wisdom can influence the laws of the universe; what happens is foredoomed; a man's life-journey is mapped out beforehand, and it is hopeless to struggle with the Will which is mightier than his own. As we know not what is pre-arranged, we can never find out what will dovetail with our true interests or is really good for man.[107]
Footnotes:
[91] i. 2-11
[92] Cf. Schopenhauer, vol. i. 401-402, and passim.
[93] ii. 3-11.
[94] v. 9-16.
[95] Pain, then, for Koheleth, as for a greater than Koheleth, is something positive; pleasure, on the contrary, negative. "We feel pain, but not painlessness; we feel care, but not exemption from it; fear, but not safety…. Only pain and privation are perceived as positive and announce themselves; well-being, on the contrary, is merely negative. Hence it is that we are never conscious of the three greatest boons of life—health, youth, and freedom as such, so long as we possess them, but only when we have lost them: for they too are negations…. The hours fly the quicker the pleasanter they are; they drag themselves on the slowlier the more painfully they are passed, because pain, not enjoyment, is the something positive whose presence makes itself felt."—Schopenhauer, ed. Grisebach, ii. 676, 677.
[96] v. 17-vi. 7; iii. 9, 12-13.