Once more let me repeat: nobody reacts to pain: pain is no "cause" of action. Pain itself is a reaction; the reflex movement is another and earlier process—both originate at different points....
700.
The message of pain: in itself pain does not announce that which has been momentarily damaged, but the significance of this damage for the individual as a whole.
Are we to suppose that there are any pains which "the species" feel, and which the individual does not?
701.
"The sum of unhappiness outweighs the sum of happiness: consequently it were better that the world did not exist"—"The world is something which from a rational standpoint it were better did not exist, because it occasions more pain than pleasure to the feeling subject"—this futile gossip now calls itself pessimism!
Pleasure and pain are accompanying factors, not causes; they are second-rate valuations derived from a dominating value,—they are one with the feeling "useful," "harmful," and therefore they are absolutely fugitive and relative. For in regard to all utility and harmfulness there are a hundred different ways of asking "what for?"
I despise this pessimism of sensitiveness: it is in itself a sign of profoundly impoverished life.
702.