I have given, in the eleventh chapter of the Riddle, the scientific reasons which forbid us to accept the personal immortality of the soul. But as the most vehement attacks have been made on this chapter by metaphysicians of the prevailing school and by Christian theologians, I must return to the question here. I am convinced, from numbers of letters I have received and conversation with educated people of all classes, that no other dogma is so firmly established and highly valued as athanatism, or the belief in personal immortality. Most men will not give up at any price the hope that a better life awaits them beyond the grave, which will compensate them for all the pain and suffering they endure here. In the picturing of this future life the mediæval geocentric idea still forms the chief feature. Troelslund has shown, in his Idea of Heaven and of the World, how this theory still dominates the metaphysics of the majority of men; in spite of Copernicus and Laplace, heaven is still for most people the semicircular blue glass bell that overarches the earth. We still hear the praises of our life in this heaven sung daily in sermons and speeches and festive orations. The orator extends his right hand "upward" to the infinite starry space of heaven, forgetting that the radius of the direction he is pointing towards changes every second, and in twelve hours reaches the precisely opposite direction, and becomes "downward." Other believers endeavor to be still more concrete, and point out definite celestial bodies as the homes of immortal souls. Modern cosmology, astronomy, and geology entirely exclude these pretty fictions from science; and modern psychology, physiology, ontogeny, and phylogeny rigorously refuse an inch of ground for athanatism.
Optimism regards the world on its good and bright and admirable side: pessimism looks to the shades and tragedies of life. In some philosophic and religious systems one or other of these tendencies is consistently and exclusively worked out; but in most systems the two are mingled. Pure and consistent realism is generally neither optimistic nor pessimistic. It takes the world as it is, a unified whole, the nature of which is neither good nor bad. Dualistic idealism, however, generally combines the two, and distributes them between its two worlds; it describes this world as a "vale of tears," and the next as a glorious city of joy and happiness. This view is a conspicuous feature in most of the dualistic religions, and has still a considerable influence, both practically and theoretically, on the minds of educated people.
The founder of systematic optimism was Gottfried Leibnitz, whose philosophy sought to achieve an ingenious harmony between divergent systems, but is really a form of dynamism, or a monism somewhat akin to the energism of Ostwald. Leibnitz gave a compendious statement of his system in his Monadology (1714). He taught that the world consists of an infinite number of monads (which almost correspond to our psychic atoms), but this pluralism was converted into a monism by making God, as the central monad, bind all together in a substantial unity. In his Theodicy (1710) he taught that God (the "all-wise, all-good, and almighty creator of the world") had with perfect consciousness created "the best of all possible worlds"; that his infinite goodness, wisdom, and power are seen everywhere in the pre-established harmony of things; but that the individual human being, and humanity taken as a whole, have only a limited capacity for development. The man who knows the real features of the world, who has honestly confronted the tragic struggle for life that rules throughout living nature, who has sympathy for the infinite sum of misery and want of every kind in the life of men, can scarcely understand how an acute and informed thinker like Leibnitz could entertain such optimism as this. It would be more intelligible in the case of a one-sided and nebulous metaphysician like Hegel, who held that "all that is real is rational and all that is rational is real."
Pessimism is the direct opposite of systematic optimism. While the one holds the universe to be the best, the other regards it as the worst, of all possible worlds. This pessimistic conception has found expression in the oldest and most popular religions of Asia, Brahmanism and Buddhism. Both these Hindoo religions were originally pessimistic, and at the same time atheistic and idealistic. Schopenhauer especially pointed out this, declaring that they were the most perfect of all religions, and importing their leading ideas into his own system. He considers it "a glaring absurdity to attempt to prove this miserable world the best of all possible ones—this cock-pit of tortured and suffering beings, who can only survive by destroying one another, in which the capacity for pain grows with knowledge, and so reaches its height in man. Truly optimism cuts so sorry a figure in this theatre of sin, suffering, and death that we should have to regard it as a piece of sarcasm if Hume had not given us an explanation of its origin (the wish to flatter God and hope for some result from it). To the palpable sophistry of Leibnitz, who would prove this world the best of all possible, we can oppose a strict and honest proof that it is the worst of all possible." However, neither Schopenhauer nor the most important of modern pessimists, Edward Hartmann, has drawn the strict practical conclusion from pessimism. That would be to deny the will to live, and put an end to suffering by suicide.
The mention of suicide as the logical consequence of pessimism may serve as an occasion to glance at the curious and contradictory views that are expressed about it. There are few problems of life (apart from immortality and the freedom of the will) on which such absurd and contradictory things have been said even down to our own time. The theist who regards life as a gift of God may hesitate to reject or return it—although the offering of one's self as a victim for other men is considered a high virtue. Most educated people still look upon suicide as a great sin, and in some countries (such as England) the attempt is punished by law. In the Middle Ages, when a hundred thousand men were burned alive for heresy or witchcraft, suicides were punished by a disgraceful burial. As Schopenhauer says: "Clearly there is nothing in the world to which a man has a plainer right than his own life and person. It is simply ridiculous for criminal justice to deal with suicide." The advance of embryology in the last thirty years has made it clear that the individual life of a man (and all other vertebrates) begins at the moment when the male sperm-cell and the maternal ovum coalesce. In this blind chance plays an important part, as in so many other important aspects of life—taking "chance" in the scientific sense, which I have explained in chapter xiv. of the Riddle. Hence, the real cause of personal existence is not the favor of the Almighty, but the sexual love of one's earthly parents; very often this consequence of the act of love has been anything but desired. If, then, the circumstances of life come to press too hard on the poor being who has thus developed, without any fault of his, from the fertilized ovum—if, instead of the hoped-for good, there come only care and need, sickness and misery of every kind—he has the unquestionable right to put an end to his sufferings by death. Every religion assents to this under certain conditions, even Christianity when it says: "If thine eye scandalize thee, cast it from thee." It is true that the conventional morality condemns suicide under any circumstances; but the reasons it alleges are ridiculously slight, and are not improved by having the mantle of religion wrapped about them.
The voluntary death by which a man puts an end to intolerable suffering is really an act of redemption. We should, therefore, describe it as self-redemption, and look on it with Christian sympathy, not brand it pharisaically as "self-murder." As a fact, this contemptuous phrase has no meaning, since murder is the taking away of a man's life against his will, while the suicide dies voluntarily. Hence, he usually deserves our sympathy, not contempt, and certainly not punishment. Our conventional morality is, as so often happens, full of senseless contradictions. Modern states have introduced conscription; they demand that every citizen shall give up his life for his country on command, and kill as many other men as he can (an admirable commentary on the Scriptural "Love your enemies") for some political reason or other. But they never secure to each citizen the means of honorable existence and free development of his personality—not even the right to work by which he may maintain himself and his family.
I fully recognize the advance that social politics has made in improving the conditions of the poorer classes, the promotion of hygiene and education and the bodily and mental welfare of citizens; but we are still very far from the attainable ideal of general prosperity and happiness which reason dictates to every civilized nation. Misery and want are increasing among the poor, as the division of labor and over-population increase. Thousands of strong and active men come to grief every year without any fault of theirs, often precisely because they were quiet and honest; thousands are hungry because, with the best will in the world, they cannot find work; thousands are sacrificed to the heartless demands of our iron age of machinery with its exacting technical and industrial requirements. On the other hand, we see thousands of contemptible characters prospering because they have been able to deceive their fellows by unscrupulous speculations, or because they have flattered and served the higher authorities. It is no wonder that the statistics of suicide increase so much in the more civilized communities. No feeling man who has any real "Christian love of his neighbor" will grudge his suffering brother the eternal rest and the freedom from pain which he has obtained by his self-redemption.
The seventh petition of the Lord's Prayer, which is repeated daily by millions of Christians, is: "Deliver us from evil." Luther explains this as a prayer to be saved "from all evil of body and soul" in this life and the next. When we consider this in the light of our monistic principles, we have naturally to set aside the superstitious ideas of the Middle Ages regarding the future life, and deal only with the petition as regards this life. The number and variety and gravity of these evils have grown in civilized communities in the nineteenth century, notwithstanding all the progress we have made in art and science and the rational reform of our personal and social life. Civilization has gained infinitely in value by the change we have made in our conceptions of time and space in this age of steam and electricity. We can make our domestic and public life much pleasanter, and avail ourselves of a far greater number of luxuries, than was possible to our grandfathers a hundred years ago. But all this has caused a much greater expenditure of nerve-energy. The brain has to bear a much greater strain, and is worn out earlier, the body is more stimulated and overworked than it was a hundred years ago. Many diseases of modern civilization are making appalling progress; neurasthenia, especially, and other diseases of the nerves, carry off more victims every year. Our asylums grow bigger and more numerous every year, and we have sanatoria on every side in which the baited victim of modern civilization seeks refuge from his evils. Some of these evils are quite incurable, and the sufferers have to meet a certain death in terrible pain. Many of these poor creatures look forward to their redemption from evil and the end of their miserable lives. The important question arises whether, as compassionate men, we should be justified in carrying out their wish and ending their sufferings by a painless death.
This question is of great importance, both in practical philosophy and in juridical and medical practice, and, as opinions differ very much on the subject, it seems advisable to deal with it here. I start from my own personal opinion, that sympathy is not only one of the noblest and finest functions of the human brain, but also one of the first conditions of the social life of the higher animals. The precepts of Christian charity which the gospels rightly place in the very foreground of morality, were not first discovered by Christ, but they were successfully urged by him and his followers at a time when refined selfishness threatened the Roman civilization with decay. These natural principles of sympathy and altruism had arisen thousands of years before in human society, and are even found among all the higher animals that live a social life. They have their first roots in the sexual reproduction of the lower animals, the sexual love and the care of the young on which the maintenance of the species depends. Hence the modern prophets of pure egoism, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Stirner, etc., commit a biological error when they would substitute their morality of the strong for universal charity, and when they ridicule sympathy as a weakness of character or an ethical blunder of Christianity. It is just in its insistence on sympathy that the Christian teaching is most valuable, and this part of its system will survive long after its dogmas have sunk into oblivion. However, this lofty duty must not be confined to men, but extended to "our relations," the higher vertebrates, and, in fact, to all animals whose brain-organization seems to point to the possession of sensation and a consciousness of pleasure and pain. Thus, for instance, in the case of the domestic animals which we use daily in our service, and which have an undoubted psychic affinity to ourselves, we must take care to increase their pleasures and mitigate their sufferings. Faithful dogs and noble horses, with which we have lived for years and which we love, are rightly put to death and relieved from pain when they fall hopelessly ill in old age. In the same way we have the right, if not the duty, to put an end to the sufferings of our fellow-men. Some severe and incurable disease makes life unbearable for them, and they ask for redemption from evil. However, medical men hold very different opinions on the matter, as I have found in conversation with them. Many experienced physicians, who practise their profession in a spirit of sympathy and without dogmatic prejudice, have no scruple about cutting short the sufferings of the incurable by a dose of morphia or cyanide of potassium when they desire it; very often this painless end is a blessing both to the invalids and their families. However, other physicians and most jurists are of opinion that this act of sympathy is not right, or is even a crime; that it is the duty of the physician to maintain the life of his patients as long as he can in all circumstances. I should like to know why.
While I am dealing with this important and—for the medical conscience—difficult question of social ethics, I may take the opportunity to consider the general attitude of physicians to the monistic philosophy. It is now half a century since I visited the wards in the Julius hospital at Würtzburg as a medical student. It is true that—happily for me and my patients!—I practised the profession only for a short time after I had passed my examinations in 1857; but the thorough acquaintance with the human organism, its anatomic structure and physiological functions, which I then obtained has been of incalculable service to me. I owe to it not only the solid empirical foundation of the special study of my life, zoology, but also the monistic tendency of my whole system. As the medical training in its widest sense includes anthropology—and so should include psychology also—its value for speculative philosophy cannot be exaggerated. The scholastic metaphysicians who still regard the chairs of philosophy at our universities as their monopoly would have avoided most of their dualistic errors if they had had a thorough training in human anatomy, physiology, ontogeny, and phylogeny. Even pathology, the science of the diseased organism, is very instructive for the philosopher. The psychologist especially acquires, by the study of mental disease and the visiting of the asylum wards, a profound insight into the mental life which no speculative philosophy could give him. There are few experienced and thoughtful physicians who retain the conventional belief in the immortality of the soul and God. What would the immortal soul do on the other side of eternity when it is already utterly ruined in this life, or was even born as an idiot? How can a just God condemn the criminal to the fires of hell when he himself has tainted the man with an hereditary bias, or has placed him in an environment in which, seeing the absence of free-will, crime was a necessity for him? And how can this all-loving God answer for the immeasurable sum of want and misery, and pain and unhappiness, which he sees accumulated before him every year in the lives of families and states, cities and hospitals? It is no wonder that the old saying ran: Ubi tres medici, duo sunt athei (Of three doctors two are sure to be atheists). One of my medical colleagues was an old, experienced, and sympathetic physician who had travelled all over the world, and had then, as director of a large hospital, been a close witness of the sufferings of humanity. Religiously educated by pious parents, and endowed with keen sensitiveness, he was, after long struggles, forced by his medical studies to part with the faith of his boyhood—like myself, in his twenty-first year. We were talking about the great mysteries of life shortly before his death, and he said to me: "I have been unable to reconcile belief in the immortality of the soul and the freedom of the will with my psychological experiences, and I have been just as unable to discover throughout the whole world a single trace of a moral order or a beneficent providence. If it is true that an intelligent Deity rules the world, he cannot be a God of love, but an all-powerful demon, whose constant entertainment is an eternal and merciless play of being and becoming, building up and destroying." However, we do still find here and there informed and intelligent physicians who adhere to the three central dogmas of metaphysics—a proof of the immense power of dogmatic tradition and religious prejudice.