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PART VII

PESSIMISM AND OPTIMISM

I

PREVALENCE OF PESSIMISM

Oriental origin of pessimism-Pessimistic poets-Byron-
Leopardi-Poushkin-Lermontoff-Pessimism and suicide

In the attempt to formulate a pessimistic theory of human nature, we are naturally led to ask why it is that so many famous men have come to a purely pessimistic conception of human life.

Pessimism, although it has been most prominent in modern times, is extremely old. Everyone knows the pessimistic wail of Ecclesiastes, written nearly ten centuries before our era: "Vanity of Vanities, all is vanity." Solomon, the supposed author, states that he "hated life, because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me, for all is vanity and vexation of spirit" (Eccl. ii., 17).

Buddha raised pessimisim to the rank of a doctrine. All life seemed to him sorrow. "Birth is sorrow, old age is sorrow, disease is sorrow, union with one whom we do not love is sorrow, separation from one whom we love is sorrow, not to gratify desire is sorrow, in short, our five bonds. with the things of the earth are sorrow." This Buddhistic

1 Quoted by Oldenberg, Le Bouddha, French translation, Paris, 1894,

p. 214.

pessimism has been the source of most of the modern pessimistic theories.

Pessimism arose in the East and was much in vogue in India even apart from Buddhism. In the poems known under the name of Bhartrihari, and dating from the beginning of the Christian era, human life has been commiserated in the following fashion. "One hundred years are the limit of the life of man; night takes half of them, half of the other half is childhood and old age, the rest is filled with diseases, with separations and the misfortunes that come from them, with working for others and with wasting one's time. Where can happiness be found in an existence most like to the bubbles in broken water?" "Man's health is destroyed by every kind of care and disease. When fortune comes to him, evil follows as if by an open door. Death takes all human beings, one after the other, and they can offer no resistance to their fate. What is there assured amongst all that the mighty Brahma has created ? "'1

Pessimistic theories spread from the Asiatic East to Egypt and Europe. Three centuries before the Christian era, there arose the philosophy of Hegesias, which maintained that experience was generally deceptive and that enjoyment was quickly followed by satiety and disgust. According to him, the sum of pain surpassed the sum of pleasure in life, so that happiness was unattainable, and in reality never existed. It was vain to seek pleasure and happiness, as these could not be realised. It was better to try to be indifferent, dulling feeling and desire. In fact, life was no better than death, and it was often preferable to end it by suicide. Hegesias was called Pisithanatos, the adviser of death. "Listeners thronged around him, his doctrine spread rapidly, and his disciples, persuaded by his voice, 1. P. Régnaud, "Le pessimisme brahmanique," in Annales du Musée Guimet, 1880, vol. i, pp. 110-III.

gave themselves to death. Ptolemy was perturbed by it, and fearing that the dislike of life would become contagious, closed the school of Hegesias and exiled its master."

991

The pessimistic tendency sometimes appears in the writings of many Greek and Latin philosophers and poets. Seneca wrote: "The spectacle of human life is lamentable. New misfortunes overwhelm you before you have freed yourself from the old ones." 2

It is in modern days, however, that there has been the greatest spread of pessimism.

Besides the philosophical theories of the last century, those of Schopenhauer, von Hartmann and Mailaender, which I discussed sufficiently in The Nature of Man, poets have formulated a pessimistic view of life. Even Voltaire was a pessimist in the following lines:

Alas! what are the course and the goal of life?

Only follies and then the darkness.

Oh Jupiter! in creating us you made

A heartless jest.

In The Nature of Man I described Byron's expression of his conception of the evils of human life. Soon after the death of the great English poet, a celebrated Italian poet, Giacomo Leopardi, sounded a note of abandoned pessimism.

Here are words which he addressed to his own heart 3: "Be quiet for ever, you have beaten enough, nothing is worthy of your beating and the earth is not worthy of your sighs. Life is nothing but bitterness and weariness, there is nothing else in it. The world is nothing but mire. Repose from now onwards. Be in despair for ever. Destiny has given us nothing but death. Despise henceforth your

1 Guyau, La Morale d'Epicure, 4th edition, 1904, p. 116.

2 Ad Marciam, chap. x.

3 Poésies et œuvres morales, by Leopardi. Translated into French 1880, p. 49.

self and nature, and the shameful concealed power which decrees the ruin of all and the infinite variety of all."

Leopardi makes his readers witnesses of his distraction and his grief: "I shall study the blind truth "—he wrote in a poem dedicated to Charles Pépoli-"I shall study the blind fates of things mortal and immortal. Why humanity came into existence, and was burdened with pain and sorrow, to what final end destiny and nature are driving it, for whose pleasure or advantage is our great pain, what order, what laws rule this mysterious universe which wise men cover with praise, and I am content to wonder at (ibid., p. 15).

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Quite a school of poets has been developed, singing the pain of the world, the "Weltschmerz" of German authors, amongst whom Heine and Nicolas Lenau are specially distinguished.

Russian poetry was born under the influence of Byronism, and its best exponents, Poushkin and Lermontoff, often laboured over the problem of the object of human existence, finding only sad answers. Poushkin, who is justly regarded as the father of lyric poetry in Russia, stated his pessimistic conception in the following lines:

Useless gift, gift of chance,

Life, why wert thou given me?

And why from the beginning art thou doomed
Irrevocably to death?

What unfriendly power

Has drawn me from the darkness,

Has filled my soul with passion,

And breathed doubt into my soul?

There is no goal for me,

My heart and my soul are empty;

And the dull emotion of life
Has filled me with black care.

Recently, Mde. Ackermann, in a series of short poems, has given voice to the grief caused to her by the world and life as they are, although she does not state exactly the reason of her bitter complaints.

Whilst pessimistic philosophers and poets reflect the thoughts and feelings of their contemporaries, it is certain that they also seriously influence their readers. And so

there has come into existence a deeply rooted conviction that the miseries of human life are far from being countervailed by its happiness. Probably such ideas have influenced the number of suicides. We do not know with any certainty the real motives of most cases of self-destruction, but it cannot be denied that the trend of modern thought has played an important part. According to statistics, the chief causes of suicide are "hypochondria, melancholia, weariness of life, and unbalancing of the mind." Thus from the Danish statistics it appears (and Denmark is the country in which suicide is most prevalent) that of 1,000 cases of suicides of males, between 1866 and 1895, 224, or onequarter, were referred to the causes I have just mentioned. In the case of women, the corresponding figures are higher, amounting to nearly one-half (403 out of 1,000). The second most common cause of male suicides is alcoholism (164 in 1,000). It is very probable that pessimism was the determining condition in most of the suicides referred to these two categories of causes. Leaving out of the question the true cases of mental alienation, amongst the victims of melancholia, hypochondria and weariness of life, in whom the mental condition was not pathological in the strict sense of the word, there must have been many who killed themselves because their view of life was pessimistic. And amongst the victims of drink, there are many who take to

1 These facts are taken from Westergaard, 2nd edit., 1901, p. 649.

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