(5) I beg the reader to observe that the above doctrine rests upon assumptions which seem to be made without due consideration. Thus:
(a) It is by no means to be assumed without question that pleasure and pain alone are the measure of the desirable. They are not the only things actually desired; and, if we assert that they alone are desirable, we fall back upon a dubious intuition.
(6) The quantitative relations of pleasures and pains are legitimate subjects of dispute, as we have seen in earlier chapters in this volume. When is one pleasure twice as great as another? How can we know that three pleasures counterbalance a pain? Is it by the mere fact that we will as we do, in a given instance? Then how prove that we will as we do, because of the equivalence of the pleasure to the pain?
(c) Who shall decide for us whether life is—not desired, it is admittedly that, as a rule,—but, also, desirable?
May the man who denies it rest his assertion upon such general considerations as that satisfaction presupposes desire, and that desire implies a lack, and, hence, pain? The famous author of "Utopia" pointed out long ago that the pains of hunger begin before the pleasure of eating, and only die when it does. Shall we, then, regard a hearty appetite as a curse, to be mitigated but not wholly neutralized by a series of good dinners?
To be sure, the pessimists do not depend wholly upon such general arguments, but point out in great detail that there is much suffering in the world, and that the fulfillment of desire, when it is attained, often results in disillusionment. But the fact remains that life, such as it is, is desired by men and other creatures generally; desired not as an exception, and under a misapprehension, but, as a rule, even by the enlightened and the far-seeing.
Is not the desirable what is desired by the rational will? We have seen that the rational social will does not aim at the suppression of desires generally, but only at the suppression of such desires as interfere with broader satisfactions. Viewed from this stand-point, the pessimist's "denial of the will to live" appears as an expression of the accidental or irrational will. It is not an expression of the nature of man, but of the nature of the pessimist.
(6) It is, perhaps, worth while to point out that there is nothing to prevent a given pessimist from being an intuitionist, an egoist, a utilitarian (of a sort), or an adherent of one of the other schools above discussed. He may assume intuitively that life is undesirable; in view of its undesirability he may act, either taking himself alone into consideration, or including his neighbor; he may invoke the doctrine of evolution; he may even, if he chooses, call it self-realization to annihilate himself, for he may argue that a will that comes to clear consciousness must see that it must be its own undoing. It is hardly necessary to point out, however, that the pessimist, as such, should not be in any wise confounded with the moralists discussed in the five chapters preceding.