Whatever nature and fortune may have done, whoever a man be, and whatever he may possess, the pain of life cannot be cast off. Excessive joy and excessive suffering always occur in the same person, for they condition each other reciprocally, and are conditioned by great activity of the mind. Error and delusion lie at the foundation of keen joy or grief. Joy rests on the delusion that lasting satisfaction has been found for the desires. The inevitable result is that when the delusion vanishes, we pay for it with pain as bitter as the joy was keen. The greater the height from which we drop, the more severe the fall.
For the most part we close our minds to the knowledge that happiness is a delusion. We strive unweariedly from wish to wish, and from desire to desire. It is incredible how meaningless when viewed from without, how dull and unenlightened by intellect when felt from within, is the course of life of the great mass of men. It is a weary longing and complaining, a dreamlike staggering through the four ages of life to death, accompanied only by trivial thoughts. Such men go like clockwork, without knowing the reason why. The life of every individual, if we survey it as a whole, is always a tragedy, but looked at in detail, it has all the character of a comedy. Everyone who has awakened from the first dream of youth, who has reflected on his own experience and on that of others, must conclude inevitably that this human world is the kingdom of chance and error, which rule without mercy in great things and in small. Everything better struggles through only with difficulty. That which is noble and wise seldom attains to expression. The absurd and the perverse in the sphere of thought, the dull and tasteless in the sphere of art, the wicked and deceitful in the sphere of action, assert a supremacy which is rarely disturbed.
Nothing external has power to deliver man from this dominion of woe. In vain does he make to himself gods, in order to get from them by prayers and flattery what can be accomplished only by his own will-power.
The most beautiful part of life, its purest joy, is pure knowledge. It is removed from all willing, and lifts us out of real existence. This relief, however, is granted only to a few, because it demands rare talents and rare opportunities. Even the few, to whom it comes only as a passing dream, are made susceptible of far greater suffering than duller minds can ever feel. They are placed in lonely isolation by their nature, which is different from that of others. To the great mass of men, purely intellectual pleasures are not accessible. They are almost incapable of the joys which lie in pure knowledge. Their lives are given up to willing.
If we could bring clearly to a man's sight the terrible sufferings and miseries to which his life is exposed, he would be seized with horror. The brevity of life may be the best quality it possesses.
All happiness is negative in character, and never positive. Only pain and want can be felt positively. Happiness is merely the absence of pain, for it follows upon the satisfaction of a wish. Some want or need is the condition which precedes every pleasure. But with the satisfaction, the wish, and therefore the pleasure, cease. The satisfaction can never be more than deliverance from a pain or want. We observe that the days of our life were happy after they have given place to unhappy ones. In proportion as pleasures increase, the capacity for them decreases. What is customary is no longer felt as a pleasure. Achievement is difficult, but when attained it is nothing but deliverance from some sorrow or want. Therefore we value our blessings and advantages only when we have lost them, for the deprivation, the need, is the positive factor.
Man's real existence is only in the present, and the present is slipping ever into the past. There is thus a constant transition into death. The future is quite uncertain, and always short. Our existence, therefore, is a constant hurrying of the present, into the dead past, a constant dying. On the physical side, the life of the body is but an ever-postponed death. In the end death must conquer, and he only plays for a little with his prey before he swallows it up.
With such intensity did Schopenhauer feel that pessimism was the only possible conclusion, that he maintained that optimism was not only absurd, but really a wicked way of thought. For optimism is a bitter mockery of the unspeakable suffering of humanity. He revolted against the theory of Leibnitz, who maintained that this is the best of all possible worlds. It is, on the contrary, he declared, the worst of all possible worlds. Optimism is at bottom the unmerited self-praise of the will to live, the real originator of the world, which views itself complacently in its works. It is not only a false, but also a pernicious doctrine. For it presents life to us as a desirable condition, and happiness as its end. Everyone believes that he has a just claim to happiness and pleasure, and if these do not fall to his lot, he believes that he is wronged. It is far more correct to regard misery and suffering, crowned by death, as the end of our life, for it is these which lead to the denial of the will to live. It is difficult to conceive how men can deceive themselves and be persuaded that life is there to be thankfully enjoyed, and that man exists in order to be happy. The constant illusion and disillusion seem intended to awaken the conviction, that nothing at all is worth our striving, our efforts, or our struggles, and that all good things are but empty vanity. The truth is, he says, we ought to be wretched and we are.
The world is a hell, which surpasses that of Dante. One need look only at man's treatment of his fellow-men.
Schopenhauer points to the children, who are sent into factories to work there daily for long hours, performing day after day the same mechanical task. This, he adds, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. Everyone would have declined the "gift" of life, if he could have seen it and tested it beforehand. But life has never been chosen freely. Everyone would retire from the struggle gladly, but want and boredom are the whips which keep the top spinning. Every individual bears the stamp of a forced condition. Inwardly weary, he longs for rest, but yet he must press forward. All movement is forced, and men are pushed from behind. It is not life that tempts them on, but necessity that drives them forward.