No doubt this kind of pessimism has always found advocates in all ages, and among all nations in Europe as well as in Asia. It was a favourite idea with the Stoics, and it has found favour with Schopenhauer, Von Hartmann, and other modern philosophers; and Shakespeare makes Hamlet give expression to it.
Happily the general tone of European philosophical thought is in another key, and the admirers of Aristotle still constitute a majority in Europe. The great Stagirite described God as ‘Energy,’ and in dealing with Solon’s dictum that ‘no man can be called happy while he lives,’ gave expression to a different belief. A good man’s virtuous energies, he asserted, are in this present life a genuine source of happiness to him; misfortunes cannot shake his well-balanced character; he surmounts the worst sufferings by generous magnanimity[48].
Even in the East a greater than Aristotle and no less an Authority than the true ‘Light of the world’—bade men rejoice and leap for joy under the most trying circumstances of life, and prize His gift of Eternal Life as their highest good.
In India, on the contrary, the Upanishads and systems of philosophy which followed on them, all harped on the same string. They all dwelt on the same minor key-note. Their real object was not to investigate truth, but to devise a scheme for removing the misery believed to result from repeated bodily existence and from all action, good or bad, in the present, previous, and future births.
The Sāṅkhya (I. 1) defines the chief aim of man to be deliverance from the pain incident to bodily life and energy; or according to the Nyāya (I. 2), from the pain resulting from birth, actions, and false knowledge; while the Vedānta considers that ignorance alone fetters the soul of man to a body, and the Yoga defines the divine Purusha (= the perfect man of Buddhism) as a being unaffected by pain (kleṡa), acts, consequences of acts, and impressions derived from acts done in previous births (āṡaya = saṉṡkāra).
Gautama’s sympathy with these ideas is shown by the twelve-linked chain of causation, put forth by him as an accompaniment to his four fundamental truths ([p. 43]), and thus expressed (Mahā-vagga I. 1. 2):—
From Ignorance comes the combination of formations or tendencies (instincts derived from former births[49]); from such formations comes consciousness (vijñāna); from consciousness, individual being (nāma-rūpa, name and form); from individual being, the six organs of sense (including mind); from the six organs, contact (with objects of sense); from contact, sensation (vedanā); from sensation, desire (lust, thirst, taṉhā = tṛishṇā); from desire, clinging to life (upādāna); from clinging to life, continuity of becoming (bhava); from continuity of becoming, birth; from birth, decay and death; from decay and death, suffering.
It is difficult to discover a strictly logical sequence in this curious twelve-linked chain. The first link is a cause, the ten following are both causes and effects, while the last is an effect only. The second (saṃkhārā) is presented to us afterwards as one of the Skandhas ([p. 109]), and we have the whole inverted in a kind of circular chain in the form of question and answer, thus:—
What is the cause of misery and suffering? Answer—Old age and death. What is the cause of old age and death? Answer—Birth. Of birth? Answer—Continuity of becoming. Of continuity of becoming? Answer—Clinging to life. Of clinging to life? Answer—Desire. Of desire? Answer—Sensation or perception. Of sensation? Answer—Contact with the objects of sense. Of contact with objects? Answer—The organs of sense. Of the organs? Answer—Name and form, or individual being. Of individual being? Answer—Consciousness (viññāṇa = vijñāna). Of consciousness? Answer—Combination of formations or tendencies (or those material and mental predispositions derived from previous births which tend to form character, compare [p. 109]). Of such formations? Answer—Ignorance.
In making Ignorance (Avidyā) the first cause of the misery of life, Gautama agreed with the Vedānta (though he explained Ignorance differently, see [p. 99]), while in the remaining chain of causes (Nidāna) we detect his sympathy with the Sāṅkhya theory of a chain of producers and products.