SOURCE: “The Scientific Basis of Pessimism: (A) The Pessimists' Interpretation of Physical Nature, The Scientific Basis of Pessimism: (B) The Pessimists' Interpretation of Interpretation of Mind, The Empirical Basis of Pessimism,” in Pessimism: A History and a Criticism, Henry S. King & Co., 1877, pp. 183-255.

[In the following excerpt, Sully questions Hartmann's grasp of science to explain his philosophical theories, and asserts that Hartmann's concept of “Will” does not allow consideration of physical and emotional sensations.]

THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF PESSIMISM: (A) THE PESSIMISTS'S INTERPRETATION OF PHYSICAL NATURE.

The pessimism both of Schopenhauer and of Hartmann is based on the conception of will as the reality of the world. This idea, though in its state of complete formation a metaphysical one, is during the earlier stages of its formation a scientific one. Both Schopenhauer and Hartmann profess to ground their ontological reality on the data of science, and both consider it to be inferrible from the known facts of science that will extends through the whole region of phenomena. The examination of this position is, then, the first part of our task in estimating the scientific basis of pessimism.

For the present I do not inquire what will is, and how far the pessimist's conception of it is a correct one. I assume that by will is meant the spring or source, or one of the springs or sources, of conscious action as discoverable in our own minds, and I only ask whether this commonly understood will is traceable in the facts and laws of the physical world.

Now, the first thing that staggers one in this extension of the idea of will to inanimate nature is that will is an element of the conscious mind, whereas purely physical phenomena are not viewed as having consciousness. Schopenhauer and Hartmann both see this difficulty and seek to remove it by the hypothesis of an unconscious will, of a will that is outside and below all consciousness. The question, therefore, now becomes: Is there any such thing as an unconscious mental phenomenon: are there any facts resembling those of our conscious minds so far as to be called mental, which yet lack the element of consciousness?

In order to answer this question we must determine what is meant by mind and what by consciousness. By mind, in its scientific sense, is meant our several states of feeling, thought, and volition, all the facts, changes, and processes, which we mark off from those of the extended material world, and of which we are said to be conscious. This point seems to be clear enough. We can never feel any hesitation in calling a sensation of pain or an inspiring idea something mental, or a movement of a tree, or the vibrations of light, something physical. But are we always conscious of mental changes or events? This leads us to examine what is meant by consciousness.

There is one view of consciousness, often put forward, which seems to be specially favourable to the supposition of unconscious mental phenomena. According to this theory, consciousness is distinct from the various contents of the mind, its feelings, desires, &c. Consciousness is to the sensations and thoughts of our minds as the eye to the moving world outside it. It is essentially a knowing or recognising of something, and this process of cognition is explained as the recognition of the particular feeling or other mental state as my state, as a modification of the conscious subject or Ego. Thus, there is such a thing as a sensation of sweet taste, and also the consciousness of this sensation as a feeling of which I am the subject. On this supposition, it is easy to imagine that the mental event may pass unnoticed by the ‘eye’ of consciousness, whether from its fleeting duration or from the pre-occupation of the visual organ. In other words, the feeling may exist, but not be recognised as mine, and so lie outside the boundaries of consciousness properly so called.

Of course, it is possible to give what meaning we like to a word, provided it still covers all the facts commonly denoted by it. Applying this test, we shall find, I think, that consciousness,¹ as the mind's knowledge of its own modifications as such. This interpretation may suit some of the facts: it does not answer to others. For example, I am suffering from the violent pangs of tooth-ache. At this moment there is nothing like a consciousness of self contained in the mental state. The only element of cognition discoverable is a vague sense that the present feeling is one of pain of a particular intensity. The only thing existing at this moment, so far as I can make out, is a feeling of pain, together with this nascent intellectual activity. Am I, then, unconscious? No one, I fancy, would be bold enough to make the affirmation. So, again, when I am wholly ‘lost’ in the beauty of a sunset, there is in the mental content of the moment no self-consciousness, no recognition of a subject underlying the present group of feelings and thoughts. Am I, then, unconscious? Certainly not. It must be plain, from these illustrations, that it is impossible to make consciousness synonymous with that complex form of intellectual activity known as self-consciousness. Consciousness may be almost wholly emotional, with only the faintest discoverable trace of cognitive activity; or, again, it may be intellectual, but wholly objective, in which case the element of self-consciousness is equally suppressed. The knowledge of a mental state as my state is something non-essential to feeling and to what we call consciousness.²

So much for the attempt to make consciousness coextensive with self-consciousness. There is another view of consciousness, which also, at first sight, tends to make it narrower than mind, and which is certainly more plausible than the doctrine just examined. This is the theory that consciousness is synonymous with attention. The problem of attention is one of the most interesting of the many unsolved questions of psychology, and when its nature is properly understood, it will undoubtedly tend to clear up what is meant by consciousness in its various meanings. It may be admitted at once that attention is the common meaning of the term conscious when used in a loose and popular way. ‘I was quite unconscious of the interruption,’ means, when closely examined, ‘I did not attend to it.’ ‘The impression reached my mind, but did not call off my attention from the object which engaged it at the moment.’ Now, this view of consciousness seems at once to point to a distinction between a mental event and the direction of consciousness to it, and so between a mental event and consciousness. But is this necessarily involved in the distinction? I think not. There are two conceivable views of attention. According to one, attention embraces all simultaneously-recurring mental states, though with very unequal degrees of force, there being always some point of fixation, so to speak, some sensation or thought which engages a supreme measure of attention.³ This view has much to support it. Internal observation may discover in the case of the most obscure idea, lurking in the outer zones of the mind, the direction of a certain faint measure of attention, even though this be an exceedingly rapid and fugitive process. If this view is sound, then it obviously follows that consciousness, even when conceived as attention, is as extensive as mental life itself.

This interpretation, however, may be objected to, as unusual and extreme. Let us, then, take the more common view that attention covers but a limited area of the whole mental field present at any given moment; the central regions being highly illuminated, the outer regions becoming darker and darker till we reach a wholly invisible territory. This view, it may be said, surely assumes the existence of sensations and other mental events out of consciousness. No doubt, in the popular sense of the term. But do those who speak in this way really mean that everything lying outside the circle forming, so to speak, the base of the cone of this attention is absolutely unconscious? I think not. For how are we to conceive the voluntary direction of attention to an object in this dark region if there is absolutely no consciousness of it? Careful reflection will show that an impression or idea, when unattended to, still forms an ingredient of our consciousness. The mind is dimly aware of it (though not necessarily as ‘its own modification’), and so far it exists in consciousness. The vague teasing pain, for example, which the summer gnats are inflicting on the face and wrists of the landscape painter absorbed in his sketch, is, strictly speaking, felt, and so is an ingredient of consciousness, though it may be felt in the minimum degree because attention has been intensely occupied with other impressions.

Still, I imagine somebody saying, when one's attention is directed to one of these outlying mental states, it at once presents itself as something more real, more intense than before. Now, surely the act of attention did not give it this increased energy. Consequently, as this fully developed intense state, it must have existed out of consciousness. The argument is ingenious, but does not bear close scrutiny. Why are we not to accept the obvious suggestion of the facts that it is the act of attention which produces the increased intensity of the sensation or idea? So far as psychological observation and reflection are to guide us, attention is to be regarded as a condition of all intense mental life. This is illustrated in the familiar fact that whenever an impression reaches a certain degree of force⁴ it engages attention by a reflex process quite independently of our volitions. Even if the faintest degrees of our sensations may exist without any action of attention, this action is a joint condition of all the higher degrees. A sensation of sound exists only so far as I attend to it, and in the absence of all attention (if this is possible) it exists simply as a nascent shadowy thing, as the dim boundary of my conscious life.

The result of this brief inquiry into the meaning of the terms mind and consciousness appears to be that though in one and a loose sense of the term consciousness mental events may be said to be outside consciousness, in another and a stricter sense of the word all that is mental is at the same time an element of consciousness. In other words, a feeling or idea may be relatively ‘unconscious’ (when unattended to) but never absolutely so. If this is the correct view of the matter it must be a contradiction to speak of mental processes wholly destitute of the quality or aspect of consciousness.

Still the reader may urge that, in spite of psychological analyses and definitions, modern science affirms the existence of wholly unconscious processes in our mental life. Indirectly, if not directly, we reach the existence of these events. In external perception, for example, there are processes of inference of which we are wholly unaware. The conclusions which we are every day drawing as to the distance and magnitudes of objects, the processes of ideation involved in many of the so-called optical illusions, all these are carried on too rapidly for consciousness. They are called by so great an authority as Helmholtz ‘unconscious inferences’ (unbewusste Schlüsse).⁵ So, again, physiological science tells us that our seemingly elementary sensations are in reality combinations or mental syntheses. According to the celebrated researches of Helmholtz a musical tone is in truth a consonance of several elements. Yet of these elements and their synthesis we are wholly unconscious. It is no good, it will be urged, to say to these facts that they contradict our fundamental psychological conceptions. If so, then so much the worse for the conceptions, which must be re-shaped in conformity with the facts. Hartmann makes great use of these teachings of modern science, and it will be necessary, therefore, for a moment to look at the question on this side.

First of all, then, as to the processes of inference which are too rapid and faint to impress consciousness, I cheerfully admit that they lie outside consciousness.⁶ But, then, are they mental events at all? That there are cerebral, that is physical, processes involved here is fairly certain; but that these are accompanied with anything mental is a wholly gratuitous supposition, and, since it contradicts our radical psychological conceptions, is to be rejected. I do not here enter into the ultimate meaning of the relation between body and mind. Even if there be a spiritual substance, it is admitted that this may make use of the bodily mechanism as its instrument in the elementary processes of sensation and bodily movement; and, if so, I can see no objection to the supposition that it may fill up blanks in its most mature activity by means of strictly bodily processes in the so-called secondary automatic actions, such as walking, reading, and I may add, external perception. But a spiritual substance cannot be affirmed by science any more than a material. And looking on mental and bodily processes simply as phenomenal events, there is not a shadow of a reason to suppose anything in these ‘unconscious inferences’ besides nervous processes, which through their frequent repetition have reached so great an ease and rapidity of execution as to fall below the limit of the necessary physical conditions of mental change.⁷

Let us now glance, for a moment, at the other order of facts in favour of unconscious mental states, namely, the complex structure of our seemingly simple sensations. A clang (I retain Helmholtz's useful term in spite of Mr. Ellis's objection), is made up of a number of partial tones, each of which would amount to a sensation. Hence, it is argued, in the sensation of clang there are present in the mind elements of which we are unconscious. But how, it may be retorted, do we know that they are now present? All that observation tells us is that a sum of nervous conditions which when separated have peculiar mental effects has, in its collective state, a new and wholly unlike effect. Or, if we choose to put it another way and to say that these single effects blend in a new effect, it is still inexact to speak of these effects as individually present in the mind, since distinct individuality in a mental event must be taken as implying certain negative conditions, namely, the absence at the same instant of other states fitted to blend with it. But, says an objector, according to Helmholtz, the elements may be picked out and recognised after practice. To this I would answer that the fact here referred to is but an illustration that a concentration of attention is a condition of distinct mental life, and that the elevation of a particular partial tone into the region of clear discriminating consciousness is here in part the product of an act of attention.

Still, urges our objector, how is attention to fasten on the particular element of a sensation if it had as yet no existence in the mind? There are two conceivable ways in which this may happen. First of all, the physical process underlying attention may accidentally direct itself to the particular central area involved in the partial sensation, and thus raise its intensity to the needful height. Secondly, the nervous process involved in the partial impression may reach the limit of consciousness previously to a voluntary act of attention. The means by which this intensification of a particular factor of a complex nervous process is effected is the co-operation of a pre-existing idea, or more correctly, the central nervous process which is the correlate of the idea. Helmholtz emphasises the need of a clear anticipation of the particular sensation of tone desired. This is but one illustration of the way in which pre-existing ideas help to condition the rise of a physical impression into the region of consciousness.

Exactly the same line of reasoning applies to the theory that a sensation is compounded of a sequence of elements, of the vaguest mental states or ‘nervous shocks.’ To say that the feeling belonging to each of these shocks (supposing there is such a feeling) is present in the mind during a sensation is to beg the whole question. Accurate observation leads only to the conclusion that individual mental states have their minimum limit of duration, and when this is not reached in the underlying nervous process they blend in one whole indecomposable state.

I would contend, then, that modern science, physiological as well as psychological, is unable to advance any proof of unconscious elements or processes in the human mind.⁸ Such proof is, indeed, in the very nature of the case, unattainable. Its semblance can only be offered by means of some latent metaphysical conception, as that mind is a substance which must always be active. But if our view is the correct one, it follows that the contradiction we have previously seen to be involved in all attempts to conceive mind as wider than consciousness must be held to be valid against any extension of mind into the region of unconscious physical events. For such extension directly contradicts the first conceptions of mind as formed from the only mental phenomena directly observable by us. This is what both Schopenhauer and Hartmann distinctly and professedly seek to accomplish, and their procedure is thus condemned ab initio.⁹

Thus far I have spoken of consciousness on its subjective side, as that which constitutes my present and immediate mental experience. But there is another and familiar meaning of the term. We may look on mind in a larger and objective aspect as an aggregate of mental states, extending in time, and may call this totality a consciousness. Viewed in this way, it presents itself as a series of phenomena which takes the form of a gradual development from the simple, vague, and homogeneous, to the multiform, definite, and heterogeneous.

In this order every particular thought and feeling is seen to be a product of the previous events of the process, and only exists in this connection. That is to say, every mental event is said to be in consciousness in the sense that it forms a link in a continuous chain of mental development. This continuity and unity of consciousness is viewed as connected with a definite physical aggregate, namely, a cerebral and nervous structure in a living organism.

This being so, we can only infer the existence of mental events in nature where we find this serial order and continuity. We reason to the existence not of stray isolated thoughts or feelings, but of collective minds, however rudimentary these may be. Leaving for the present the question how far we are justified in inferring the existence of analogues of such streams of consciousness in the world around us, we see that, if we would avoid contradiction, we must not infer the presence of detached mental events where we cannot also infer the existence of a serial mental life.

Now these conditions of reasoning are quite overlooked by Schopenhauer and Hartmann. The latter more especially reasons to single volitions and previsions in the obscure regions of our bodily organism and elsewhere without stopping to inquire whether such mental events are conceivable apart from a whole developing consciousness. So, again, his resolution of an atomic force into something quasi-mental involves the fallacy that mental life occurs in the absence of all the conditions of differentiation and aggregation, such as we find in the human brain. In other words, there is in each of these forces nothing but one unchanging mental phenomenon, without any of those successions, alternations, and ‘groupings’ which are the conditions of the genesis of any mental phenomenon.

We see, then, that Hartmann falls into a double contradiction, when in his characteristic careless fashion he picks up unconscious mental fragments in all parts of the physical terrain. First of all, in that he talks about unconscious mind at all, secondly in that he speaks of unconscious mental events as wholly detached from, and independent of, a collective mind or a developing consciousness.

And now let us glance at the nature of the ‘evidence’ which Schopenhauer and Hartmann bring forward in favour of these single manifestations of mind in physical nature. One must suppose that this evidence is of the very strongest when it is accepted in the face of the contradictions just pointed out. Is this really the case?

The material or atomic forces of nature, say these writers, are resolvable into attractions and repulsions. But we cannot conceive these processes except as modes of volition, that is to say, as a kind of striving after something. Schopenhauer rightly says that ‘force’ is something wholly mysterious and can only be made a reality by being envisaged as will. But what if science, properly so called, does not assert the existence of such a thing as force any more than it asserts the existence of matter? In science ‘force’ is simply a term which groups together a certain class of phenomena, such as electrical, chemical, and so on. These phenomena are supposed to be reducible to movement as their common substratum. But movement itself is as much a phenomenon as an impression of heat or light. An atomic force stands for nothing but one series of these phenomena, and it makes no difference to the essential character of such atomic processes that they lie outside the limits of our sensuous perception. For they are still conceived in terms of sensible impressions, nor would they be significant ideas at all if they had not this foundation.¹⁰

But, it will be urged, the forces of physical sciences mean something more than actual movement. The force of repulsion, for instance, is said to exist even when the movements of repulsion are counteracted by external pressure. In other words, force means, in addition to actual movement, tendency to movement. No doubt. But what is ‘tendency’ but a pure fiction? All that observation tells me is that certain movements follow on certain conditions. When these conditions are not realised, I invent something over and above the movement itself, and try to give it real existence. In truth, however, this tendency is nothing but a projection into the region of objective existence of a certain prevision in my mind, the assurance that movement of a similar kind will reappear when the negative conditions are again realised. This fiction is of great use in science, provided always that it be recognised as a fiction. Thus, in the great discovery of the present generation, the principle of the conservation of energy, the tendencies to movement are conjoined with the actual movement and their sum affirmed to be constant. But this principle no more involves the supposition of force as a real entity than the conception of tendency involves a present occult entity.¹¹

In truth, then, science cannot affirm the existence of any dynamic reality, so that it offers no ground for the construction of will in nature. I grant that if force were proved to be a reality in the physical world, we should, by the very limitations of our minds, be compelled to think of it in terms of our volitions. But since it is, in science proper, nothing but a serviceable fiction, it cannot be made the basis of any such inference as Hartmann seeks to draw from it. If attraction and repulsion mean nothing but movement in given directions and our prevision of such movement, it is the consummation of fallacy to argue that they necessarily involve ‘striving’ and ‘longing.’¹²

So much, then, for the scientific evidence in favour of the existence of volitional processes such as striving and longing in the inorganic world. Does it fare any better with the proof of these isolated manifestations of will in the organic world? Here will assumes a less vague form, and, assisted by mental representation or prevision, is to be envisaged as a process of definite intention. In the repair of tissue, for example, we see, according to Hartmann, the action of such definite intention; so in the growth of the organism, the processes of reproduction, and so on.

As an example of Hartmann's mode of reasoning, I cannot do better than select the peculiar theory of motor innervation already referred to. In willing to move my little finger we must suppose, says Hartmann, that in addition to the conscious volition which acts on the cerebrum there is an unconscious volition acting on the point, P, in the cerebellum or medulla whence the motor nerve issues (why not also in the still lower motor centre in the spinal cord?), and this unconscious act manifestly involves a representation of the point, P, to be acted on. What, it may be asked, must be said of the ‘science’ here resorted to? This highly original view of voluntary movement is put forward as a means of escaping from a supposed difficulty, namely, the fact that in volition there is no knowledge of motor nerve or muscle, that the whole content of the mind in volition is the movement itself. But is this difficulty a real one? Certainly not. All that we need to assume, in order to understand the sequence of a definite movement on a definite volition, is that the mental process should be connected with the excitation of some central area, which involves as its physical consequence the outward discharge of motor energy towards the particular muscle or muscles concerned.¹³ If this is all that is required, why should it be necessary for volition to excite immediately the secondary starting-point of the motor nerve in the lower centre, when its excitation is the proper physical consequence of an excitation of the area of conscious volition itself, namely, certain elements in the anterior region of the cerebrum? Hartmann says there are no conceivable mechanical connections by which this indirect excitation could be effected. But this statement simply illustrates the author's ignorance respecting the newest researches in physiology, as also his readiness to put forth negative propositions which, in the nature of the case, do not admit of proof.

It is difficult to suppose that Hartmann is serious in maintaining that he is here placing himself on scientific grounds, seeing that it is the very spirit of contemporary biological science that it aims at eliminating the teleological point of view and at reducing all the problems of organic development to mechanical principles. You may quarrel with modern science for its presumption in supposing that it can ever express vital processes in terms of movement, and so bring them under mechanical laws; but it is absurd to say that you are proceeding scientifically as long as you place yourselves outside the standing-ground of modern science. Science may fail; then metaphysic or something else may step in and fill up the gap. Whatever it be, however, it will be something very different in its method and logical value from what we now mean by science.¹⁴

The present relation of science to the problem of design in nature is simply this:—The methods of biology seek to interpret all vital processes as movements which, however complicated, obey the universal laws of physical movement. The method of evolution seeks to assign definite mechanical antecedents to the chain of movements implied in individual growth and development. Also it propounds a properly mechanical explanation of the origin of the various forms of organic life. In doing this, moreover, it attempts to account for those numerous adaptations of structure to function, which were previously regarded as wholly inexplicable, by the principle of physical causation. Thus it is the distinct problem of modern physiological science to reduce all the facts of life to the play of mechanical forces.

But, again, the great doctrine of the conservation of energy, carried out to its logical results, has led to the theory of animal and human automatism, namely, that all the actions of our bodily organs, voluntary as well as involuntary, are fully explained as the results of mechanical processes. According to this view, consciousness is not an essential link in the chain of physical events making up our bodily life. Seeing, hearing, talking, walking, even the very cerebral processes underlying thought, would all go on just the same were there no such thing as a conscious mind present. It follows from this idea that mind can never be a necessary inference in any region of the physical world. It is not required as a cause of any discovered movement. It cannot, properly speaking, be seen to be a necessary effect of any group of movements. At best it can only be inferred on the ground of analogy, when there presents itself a group of conditions resembling those which appear to sustain our own consciousness.

Such being the present attitude of science, it must be confessed that Hartmann's attempts to base his random ‘discoveries’ of intuition in inanimate nature on science and induction is about as startling an anachronism as one could well find in the history of thought. In truth, his method, so far from being ‘inductive,’ is as unscientific as that of any of the teleologists of a bygone century. It rests wholly on the fancied discovery in a physical process of some vague resemblance to conscious human action, and is as much anthropomorphism as the earliest and crudest religious ideas of the external world. Even when the author seems to go to work with something of a scientific spirit, as in criticising Darwinism, the predominance of anti-scientific ideas is continually forcing itself on the reader's attention. The whole argument is, indeed, a kind of petitio principii: natural selection, &c., cannot account for morphological changes, for the upward direction of development, and so on, just because these require the action of will.

It follows from what has been said before that if the mental is to be affirmed in the physical world it must be as a conscious aggregate, that is, as a collective individual mind. How far the method of analogy, which, as we have seen, is all that we can here avail ourselves of, will carry us in informing material objects with conscious life is a nice question about which science is as yet silent. It may, perhaps, be regarded as certain that we shall never project the region of consciousness beyond the boundaries of nervous organisation. Still we do not as yet know what these are. Finer instruments may reveal a rudimentary nervous apparatus in plants; and there is nothing absurd in the supposition that with growing knowledge we may be led to conjecture the presence of something like such an apparatus even in the structures of the inorganic world. Into this question, however, our present inquiry hardly leads us. Schopenhauer and Hartmann care nothing about the limits of conscious life. What they want is a trace of a single volition, or current of volition, at this or at that point. On this fragile foundation they can build their ontological edifice, their all-embracing will. The thing to be emphasised here is that all such inference differs toto cœlo from the procedure by analogy proper, which infers as a probability something answering to human consciousness wherever there presents itself an adequate material substratum for those processes of segregation and aggregation, in which, as we have seen, consciousness consists.¹⁵

THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF PESSIMISM. (B) THE PESSIMISTS'S INTERPRETATION OF MIND.

In the foregoing chapter, which may appear to the reader as somewhat of a digression, I have sought to show that there is no scientific evidence for the existence of will as a moving principle in physical nature. So far as this attempt has succeeded, one side of the pessimists' scientific construction is undermined and destroyed. Even supposing that life's misery comes from will, we may at least comfort ourselves that this unhappy principle is not yet made out to be the essential nature of all physical things. At most it has a limited existence, and thus a way seems opened up for a possible reduction of evil to something like a moderate quantity.

But now comes another question: Is the will which is known as a factor of conscious minds what Schopenhauer and Hartmann take it to be; and if they have misinterpreted the facts, does this misinterpretation involve as its consequence the fallacious character of the proposition that will is even in ourselves the source of life's misery? Here we are going still deeper, and investigating the very foundations of scientific pessimism. In discussing this part of the pessimists' doctrine, I may very likely appear now and again to be reproducing trite psychological truths; yet, if it be found that such truths have been completely overlooked by contemporary writers, it can hardly be superfluous to reaffirm them.

First of all, then, it is evident that both Schopenhauer and Hartmann mean by will something one and substantial, a single permanent substratum in the individual mind. In fact, will is as much an occult faculty or essence as it was in the cumbrous thought of the schoolmen. Now, it may not be unnecessary to remark that modern scientific psychology knows nothing of such an entity. As a science of phenomena and their laws, it confines itself to the consideration of processes of volition, and wholly discards the hypothesis of a substantial will as unnecessary and unscientific. In reviving this idea, the pessimists show that their method is really a metaphysical one, and that their numerous professions of an adherence to the ways of science are erroneous. The manner in which Schopenhauer assumes, without the least investigation of the matter, that by simple introspection we may reach a sub-phenomenal reality in the shape of will, is but one among many illustrations of the essentially amateur character of his science.¹⁶ How, the bewildered reader may ask, is this entity reached? Not by ordinary perception, for this is confined to phenomena. Is it, then, a necessary inference from phenomena, an instinctive belief accompanying a perception, or what? Into such questions Schopenhauer does not care to go. At the very outset, where he seems to be seeking firm ground in the facts of psychology, he is, in truth, quietly assuming the very ontological principle which has to be thus proved. He wants to conclude from the existence of volition in us that will is the principle of all things; he overlooks, however, the mediate link in the argument, namely, the transition from processes of volition to an entity underlying these processes.

Will being thus in science nothing but a sum of processes, the next point for consideration relates to the mental operations which may be rightly included under this term. A mere glance at the systems of Schopenhauer and Hartmann will suffice to show that with them the word covers all mental phenomena other than intellectual. They speak of will now as impulse, now as desire, now as passion, now as emotion. That is to say, they throw together the two regions of action and feeling, and thus substitute a twofold for a threefold division of mind. Here the antagonism between their method and that of modern science comes again yet more clearly into view. For all modern psychology sets out with the recognition of three fundamental activities or functions of mind, namely, feeling, intelligence, and action or volition, which, though never found in perfect separation from one another are logically distinguishable; and this important and fruitful division of the subject was emphasised by that very Kant from whom Schopenhauer, as we have seen, learnt so much.

These writers may appear to have grouped under one head the various emotional and volitional processes, on the ground that they include all the mental antecedents of bodily movement or external action. But even this narrow ground is untenable. For ideas are often as much an antecedent of movement as feeling or volition, as one may see in the well-known class of ‘ideo-motor’ phenomena which include such movements as talking aloud, somnambulation, &c.

One need not, however, urge this objection, since the classing together of feeling and active impulse is in itself erroneous. Feeling, though it has its active side, in connection with volition, has also its purely passive side. In fact, feeling and active impulse are the two primitive and most strongly contrasted forms of mental life (intellect manifesting itself in later stages), and are perfectly co-ordinate, answering to the well-marked division in the nervous system of sensory and motor elements.

Will, or volition, is, then, wrongly conceived as including all emotional phenomena. But, once more, does volition, in its commonly accepted meaning, include all active impulses themselves, all the mental states which have no meaning except in reference to bodily movement? Surely not. Schopenhauer and Hartmann are forcing language when they thus try to heap together such perfectly distinct operations as instinctive and voluntary actions. For example, it is probable, as Mr. Bain argues, that there exists in the early mind a disposition to spontaneous movement, which is connected with the vigour of the motor apparatus. This impulse is, on its mental side, only definable in its first stage as a sense of discomfort when the appropriate movements are in any way impeded. Now, it is one thing to say that volition in its proper meaning is a growth out of these lower and instinctive impulses, another thing to efface the well-marked distinction between them. The only point they have in common is that they are in their nature tendencies to action; but this point of agreement is insignificant when compared with their points of difference; and, in any case, to extend a term which is properly confined to one class, to all these unlike mental states, is wholly unjustifiable and utterly confusing.

It may be thought, perhaps, that I am here quarrelling with the pessimists about a mere term. But an incorrect use of terms may easily become the starting-point of serious error as to matters of fact. And so it will be found in this case. By hiding from view the essential differences between volition and lower action, by ignoring the characteristics of will properly so-called, the pessimist falls into the blunder of supposing that this will is the parent, instead of the natural and necessary foe, of life's misery.

What then, it may be asked, is it which marks off the instinctive impulses from volition proper? Nothing else than the very property which Schopenhauer and Hartmann regard as the common characteristic of both groups of processes, in other words, the quality of vagueness or blindness about which we are constantly hearing. Instinctive impulse has no definite aim in consciousness. When not immediately satisfied it is simply a state of unrest (dis-ease) and craving. There enters into it, so far as our own experience teaches, no clear representation of a definite line of action. And certainly it is wholly unaccompanied with any anticipation of an end or a pleasure to be attained by the action. Thus appetite, which in its early stages is purely instinctive, is simply a feeling of pain and unrest, and at most a vague sense of something to be done. As soon, however, as repeated satisfactions enable the child to anticipate the pleasure of eating and distinctly to picture the actions necessary to this pleasure, appetite is no longer simply instinctive, but shares in the distinctive character of volition.

We thus see that the simplest conceivable form of volition proper involves both an intellectual and an emotional element. Will is, in fact, even in its earliest stages, the product of instinctive active impulse, an intellectual process (recollection and imagination or representation),¹⁷ and feeling (pleasure or pain). Consequently, it is the subject last dealt with in the exposition of mental science What an utter confusion of ideas is involved, therefore, in the pessimists' psychology, which sets out with the primary nature of will! First of all, the abstraction will (apart from its substantiality) is an impossibility, since there can be no volition without aim, that is intellectual representation. Secondly, so far from feeling being a mere appendage of will, the very conception of volition presupposes feeling (pleasure or pain) as something anterior and consequently independent. Of the method of reasoning by which Schopenhauer and Hartmann seek to establish the dependence of pleasure and pain on active impulses, I shall have to speak presently. Here I am concerned merely with their treatment of the idea of will.

Thus far I have taken the simplest view of volition. In all its more developed forms new elements are discoverable. The distinguishing marks of this higher volition are what we call deliberation, choice, and self-restraint. These cannot be wholly resolved into intellectual and emotional factors. Comparison of different ends, and selection, do, no doubt, depend in part on intellectual development, on the growth of memory and imagination, yet not exclusively so. We commonly distinguish a man of highly cultivated intellect from a man of fully developed will, and we mean something by this distinction. Indeed, we are familiar with the observation that intellectual culture may be directly injurious to what we call will, when it is unaccompanied by the development of something else. What, then, is this something else?

First of all, what we mean by force of will includes, no doubt, a readiness to act in general; but this is not a distinctive mark of the higher volition, but comes to it out of the primitive impulses to action, more especially that disposition to spontaneous movement to which I have already referred. What seems to mark off a man of highly developed will (apart from intellectual elements) is a capacity of self-restraint, or, to use a good physiological term, of inhibition. The nascent undisciplined will is nothing but the realisation of each momentary impulse as it arises. The mature will implies the controlling of these impulses; the repression of action, when conflicting motives arise, in order to compare and to select; the maintaining of a definite purpose beyond the moment, and the persistent concentration of mind on this. Now this capacity is something more than intellectual. To see one end as larger than another is an act of intellectual discrimination; to repress the impulse which tends to the less worthy goal because of this perception of a higher end is something more, and is precisely what distinguishes higher will both from lower will and from mere intellect. I am not concerned here with analysing this ingredient in the higher volition. It is enough that we are able to recognise it and roughly to define it.¹⁸

We are now, perhaps, in a position to estimate the value of the pessimists' assertion that will is the real source of life's misery, since it is essentially a process of longing, and consequently of dissatisfaction. Does this proposition, together with the practical corollary drawn from it, namely, that the only escape from life's ills is to be found in the cessation or negation of all volition, rest on any real psychological foundation?

Man, say Schopenhauer and Hartmann, so long as he wills, is like a dissatisfied, peevish child that clamours for all it sees, that soon tires of all which a good fortune allots it, and is for ever tormenting itself with new cravings. Does the reader recognise the man of will in this description? Is it not rather odd to look for an illustration of the effects of will in a fickle, whimsical child? One can hardly imagine that writers are really serious when they thus set at nought all the teaching of every-day experience and the most obvious distinctions of our common thought. It is plain that what is here meant by will is simply desire—wild, unbounded, wholly unrestrained desire. In fact desire, longing, craving, is the form in which both Schopenhauer and his successor most frequently speak of will. That desire is not volition, in its proper sense, the reader needs hardly be told. What, then, is its exact relation to volition?

Desire may roughly be defined as the mental state which arises when an idea fitted to be the end of an immediate volition fails to call forth this volition, because the circumstances of the moment do not allow of the appropriate action. If there is no appreciable interval between the representation of an end and the execution of the voluntary act there is no room for the state called desire. Again, if the volition is of a protracted nature, a series of actions being necessary to the fruition, there need not, properly speaking, be any feeling of desire. The firm anticipation of a certain end (even though remote) is quite unlike what is meant by desire or longing. The first is the necessary accompaniment of all prolonged volition; the second is quite incompatible with volition. Desire is a mixed state of feeling, pleasurable in so far as it involves the imagination of some enjoyment, painful since this enjoyment is viewed not as certainly to be realised by a present volition, but as something opposed to present reality, as something absent and wanting; or the painful ingredient may be said to arise from a continual frustration of a volitional impulse, through the absence of the proper opening for the action.¹⁹

Desire has thus as its conditions, first, an intellectual process, the representation of some agreeable or valuable thing; secondly, a properly active process, an impulse to realise the object; and lastly, the abortive termination of this impulse. If any one of these three conditions fails, desire ceases. Thus, if the intellectual representation of the object is withdrawn, no more desire is possible.

The above is intended as a rough definition of desire as known to ourselves in consciousness. How far it includes instinctive ‘desires’ and appetite does not particularly concern us here. Properly speaking, there can be no such thing as desire apart from a representation, more or less distinct, of something wanting and so desired. In many of the animal instincts, e.g. that of migration, such a definite representation of an object is possibly present. So in appetite there is, perhaps, from the first a dim perception of something to be possessed. The state of desire may thus be of very unequal degrees of distinctness. It may be further objected to our definition that it excludes desires for objects apart from their pleasurable character. The question whether desire is possible when there is no conception of the object as pleasure-bringing cannot be entered into here. I have assumed provisionally that all desire involves this conception in some faint measure at least. Of course, this pleasure-bringing aspect must include fitness to relieve pain, and so the pain of ‘uneasiness,’ which may arise from some blind instinctive impulse. Thus this last may often be the first stage of desire proper.

From this it is plain that desire is not only distinct from volition, but also made subject to volition just like any instinctive impulse. First of all, when the futility of desire is distinctly recognised there is a motive for the inhibition of the active impulse which enters into desire. Paradoxical as it may seem, a man of strong will may bring himself to look calmly on a ‘desirable’ thing without desiring it. The process is precisely the same as when he ‘inhibits’ an impulse to some present action. But this is not all. There is a far more effective way of ridding oneself of the incubus of futile longing, namely, by a control of the intellectual process of representation. Will, by acting on the thoughts, has the prerogative of determining within certain limits what the contents of our imagination shall be; and the obvious and perfectly effective remedy for the plague of ungratified desire is the volitional act by which we divert attention to new objects. So far, then, from desire being one with will, it is one chief business of all mature will to regulate, restrain, and, if needful, to stamp out desire.

The pessimists' theory of desire is thus condemned as utterly confounding distinct phenomena, and as overlooking the most obvious interpretation of familiar facts. It includes three cardinal blunders: First of all, it asserts that desire is the fundamental fact in our active nature, whereas it is a highly restricted mode of active impulse dependent on complex conditions, and is secondary not only to blind active impulse, but also to the simplest stage of volition proper. This follows from the fact that volition requires the minimum pause between stimulation and movement, whereas desire requires a longer pause. By help of this fallacy these writers have succeeded in obtaining an apparent basis for their pessimism in the fundamental constitution of will.

Secondly, this theory wholly misconceives the nature of the cessation of desire. It supposes that this is invariably due to intellect. But this is again to confound desire with volition. Our volitions obviously subside when we recognise the impossibility of the action, since this means the withdrawal of the intellectual condition of volition. It may be that this recognition is followed by a complete quiescence of the volitional impulse. In this case, however, there is no such thing as desire. Desire begins only with the recognition of a pause, of an obstacle, and is the state of mind which arises when the representation of the end persists, in spite of the discovery of its present unattainableness. On the other hand, the theory of Schopenhauer and his follower completely overlooks the obvious fact that desire is controlled and checked by a distinctly volitional process. By help of this second fallacy they succeed in ‘proving’ that there is no remedy for the misery of life in the will itself.

Lastly, the pessimists' theory of desire, by confounding desire with volition, mixes the distinctly pleasurable state of anticipation during the execution of a volition or series of volitions with the conflicting and painful state of desire proper. How this fallacy helps them in proving their pessimism need hardly be pointed out. The whole region of voluntary activity, that is by far the largest part of life, is thus condemned as necessarily painful.²⁰

To sum up the results of this critical examination: Pessimism has no basis in a correct psychology of the will or volition. A correct reading of the facts of the only will known to ourselves tells us that misery may flow from ignorance or erroneous supposition, from the impetuosity of undisciplined single impulse, but never from volition as such. In its very nature, all will tends to lessen pain, and to increase pleasure. If it fails to do this it is not because it is will, but because the will is either too rudimentary and undisciplined, or because it lacks an adequate guidance from the illuminating intellect.

Let us now examine the pessimists' doctrine of pleasure and pain in the light of their conception of volition. Both Schopenhauer and Hartmann agree in viewing our emotional life as a mere accessory of volition. Pleasure and pain are to their minds nothing but the satisfaction and non-satisfaction of will or desire. This theory, so far from being new, is as old as philosophy itself. It appears, as we have seen, in Plato, and is more distinctly affirmed by the Epicureans. It reappears in numerous German and French writers, including Leibnitz, and Montaigne, and is commonly adopted by the Italian writers on philosophy of the eighteenth century.²¹ Again, if pleasure be nothing but satisfaction of will, it follows, and has been commonly held to follow, that all pleasure is preceded by desire, that is by pain. In truth, this is the form in which the doctrine has commonly been presented by its supporters. Hartmann, as we have seen, seeks to modify this doctrine; of this I shall speak presently. Schopenhauer, on the other hand, recognises the connection between the idea of pleasure as satisfaction of will and that of the negativity of pleasure, and asserts the logical consequences of his doctrine without any attempt at qualification. Pleasure, being nothing but the satisfaction of desire, can never be anything than negative, that is, it is nothing more than the absence of pain. How far, it may be asked, does this theory of pleasure and pain correspond with the facts?

If the psychology of the pessimists is at fault when they treat of will, it is far more faulty when they deal with pleasure and pain. The assertion that pleasure is always preceded by pain has been again and again denied as flagrantly contradictory to every-day subjective facts. All the pleasures of stimulation, for example, are perfectly independent of pain as an antecedent. Where is the want, the longing, preceding the innumerable agreeable sensations which are excited in us during a walk on a bright spring morning? Every unexpected joy of life is a pure delight, the value of which is undiminished by a foregoing state of painful desire. What proportion of all our pleasures these unbidden delights may form, I do not pretend to say, though I would protest against Hartmann's cool assumption that they are but a small minority.

Just as pleasures arise in the absence of preceding want, so there are pains which are not born of desire. All desire, in its proper and narrow sense, is, as we have seen, painful, but the converse is obviously untrue; all pain is not desire. It always gives rise to desire, no doubt, but it exists in many cases before it and independently of it. Is the pain of a present attack of tooth-ache, or of a sudden humiliation, the same thing as the desire for relief? Is it not a flagrant perversion of the facts to say that these pains are in any sense the product or the accompaniment of desire?

We find, then, both pleasures and pains which are perfectly independent of will and desire. Not only so, we may discover will itself without the element of pain which is said to be essential to it. A friend calls in after dinner, tells me he is off for the opera and has a spare ticket for me. I am delighted, proceed to put on the necessary outdoor clothing, to look up my opera-glass, and to accompany my friend, that is, to execute a long series of separate volitions. Yet, all the while, I am not only free from pain, but am rather elated with a very agreeable anticipation, and cannot, by the greatest effort of introspective attention, find any element of disquietude and longing in this exercise of will.

If, then, experience tells us that pleasure and pain may exist independently of volition, and, on the other hand, that volition may exist unaccompanied by pain, the assertion that all will is pain, and all pleasure and pain mere incidents of volition, is sufficiently disproved.

Let us now glance for a moment at Hartmann's conception of the relation of pleasure and pain to will. As we have seen, he agrees with Schopenhauer that these feelings are nothing but the satisfaction and dissatisfaction of volition; but, since he cannot overlook the facts which contradict this bold assertion, he calls in his deus ex machinâ, the Unconscious, to help him out of the difficulty. Where we cannot find in consciousness any state of volition underlying our pleasures and pains, this substratum exists as unconscious will. This employment of a hypothesis which, as we have seen, is self-contradictory, in the most open defiance of the facts of conscious life, needs no comment. It is surely the reductio ad absurdum of metaphysical theory.

But Hartmann, while connecting pleasure and pain with will, tries to save the positive character of pleasure. This mode of feeling is not a negation, though it is very nearly the same thing as a negation. Hartmann does not show why pleasure is to be regarded as positive, nor does he seek to reconcile its positivity with his doctrine that all pleasure is satisfaction of will. The truth is, it is impossible to effect such a reconciliation. The very idea of satisfaction presupposes that of preceding dissatisfaction. The pleasures of satisfaction arise, as I have shown, through a foregoing state of desire and longing, which Hartmann, like Schopenhauer, recognises to be painful. It must follow, then, on Hartmann's principles, that with respect to the positive pleasures recognised by him, as they answer to an unconscious volition, so they follow on an unconscious longing.

It might, indeed, be urged in favour of Hartmann that he is using the term satisfaction in a loose sense, and that by positive pleasure he means the gratification attending volition when there is no preceding state of desire. Even then, however, Hartmann's theory does not stand; for this gratification rests, as we have seen, on the distinct anticipation and partial ideal possession of a pleasure which is independent of the volition.

If the pessimists' conception of the relation of will to pleasure and pain is erroneous, what, it will be asked, is the right conception? For an answer the reader need only take up any respectable text-book in psychology. Pleasure and pain are found to arise from certain modes of bodily and mental activity, which are variously defined as those which promote or hinder normal function, which add to or diminish the energies of the organism. Being thus experienced before and independently of volition, they enter in ideal form, that is as recollections and anticipations, into the process of volition. We will to enjoy ourselves in a particular way, because the idea of the enjoyment already exists as the result of previous experiences.²² It is a gross perversion of facts to say that the prospect is enjoyable because we already will it. The case is similar when our volition proceeds in the direction of the avoidance of a pain. The idea of the pain already exists before the volition, and is, in truth, its real determining force.

Not only does volition pre-suppose pleasure and pain as independent existences; desire itself, in its proper sense, does so too. To desire something which is withheld from us, say, an evening's entertainment from which we are shut out through bodily indisposition, means that we conceive by help of past experience the possession of the object to be a pleasure. When all such independent experience is wanting there can be no definite desire, only a state of unrest, or at most a vague sense of something wanting.²³

Still, I have admitted that desire is in itself a painful condition from which the fruition of the thing desired clearly delivers us. Moreover, a good deal of pleasure is commonly spoken of as a satisfaction of desire, and this mode of speech cannot but rest on some basis of fact. Not only so, there are many pleasures which evidently repose on a negative basis, that is to say, they arise solely through the removal of some previous state of pain. What, it may be asked, is the true nature of all such negative pleasure?

First of all, let us take the hypothetical case of pain unaccompanied by desire for relief, for example, an infant's bodily distress. The cessation of this, one might imagine, would be in itself nothing but quiescence, that is to say, a neutral condition of mind neither pleasurable nor painful. Yet a distinction must be drawn. Quiescence means uniformity of feeling, in other words, a dead level of consciousness. Here, however, there has been a sudden transition from pain to painlessness. By the very force of this transition the new state would acquire a peculiar intensity. Its quality in contrast to that of the foregoing pain would impress itself, so to speak, on the child's mind. Would it be correct to call this effect an approximation to a state of positive pleasure? Perhaps not: one may safely say, however, that its value is somewhat higher than that of a protracted condition of painlessness.

Let us now suppose the addition of a little intelligence, involving the rudimentary processes of memory and comparison. In this case the cessation of the pain will be followed by an idea of it as something past. This being contrasted with the present state of mind, there arises the peculiar state of feeling called a sense of relief, which includes the distinct recognition of an escape from something disagreeable. This state of feeling is by no means neutral; it is distinctly pleasurable, the pleasure being due to this very recognition of escape from something, of elevation above something, or, in other words, of gaining something.²⁴

Let us now take the case of desire. It does not matter whether it be a desire for some withheld enjoyment, or one for relief from some present pain. In either case the desire is painful, there being, as we have seen, an active, and even a volitional impulse involved in the state, and a conflict between this and the recognition of the unattainability of the object desired. Let us now suppose the desire to be realised and the present pain removed, or the desired pleasure actually present: what effect has the past state of desire on the present feeling? Clearly, it supplies another element in the positive pleasure which ensues. In the first place, the impeded active impulse is liberated, and performs its function, and this activity itself, especially after the necessary energy has been pent up awhile, is distinctly pleasurable. But this is not all. The persistence of the desire in recollection, along with the present feeling, gives rise to the sense of desire appeased, conflict resolved, of the attainment of harmony; and the recognition of this, the perception of one's present condition as one of harmony after discord, yields an ingredient of lively pleasure. It is this current of positive gratification which helps to make the relief from pain so delicious, while it adds intensity to the pleasure which the attainment of every desired enjoyment would otherwise bring us.

In view of these facts, what are we to think of Hartmann's assertion that in the satisfaction of hunger ‘the individual never experiences a positive elevation above the zero point (Nullpunkt) of feeling’? It is only just to Hartmann to say that he is here distinctly excluding the elements of positive gratification which flow from the sensations accompanying eating. Still, is it not a flagrant oversight not to perceive that the satisfaction of hunger in a being capable only of the rudimentary processes of recollection and comparison brings a distinct positive gratification in the shape of a sense of want filled up and an eagerly desired object attained?

In one place Hartmann shifts his ground, maintaining that the pleasure arising from the withdrawal of pain, as toothache, is far inferior to the pain itself. Who, it may be asked, ever doubted this? But it is one thing to deny all positive worth to such relief, another thing merely to rank it below the actuality by which the value of the relief is measured.

The obvious retort to Hartmann's self-evident assertion is that the negative pain also which arises from the cessation of a pleasure is inferior to that pleasure. The dying away of a beautiful song leaves a faint, momentary longing, no doubt, but what is this compared with the real enjoyment itself? Hartmann does not, of course, speak of this. At the same time, he seeks, to some extent, to put the value of negative pains above that of negative pleasures. Whenever the pleasure and pain which cease and give rise to the opposite feelings are customary ones, the succeeding negative pain is, according to him, much greater than the succeeding negative pleasure. In other words, we miss pleasures intensely, whereas the removal of customary pains affects us but slightly.

Hartmann here touches on the well-known principle of accommodation or habituation, through which all oftrepeated states of feeling become, in a certain measure, dulled; only, with characteristic one-sidedness, he applies this to pleasure only, and not to pain. Surely, a frequently recurring or customary pain, whether bodily or mental, tends to lessen with time as greatly and as rapidly as an habitual pleasure. We ‘get used’ to all kinds of annoyances; that is, we become comparatively indifferent to them, just as our customary enjoyments are apt to grow insipid. And further, the absence of a dull customary pain is quite as operative on our feeling as the absence of a customary pleasure. A sick person who has grown approximately indifferent to his condition experiences a deep sense of relief and the elating joy of health when convalescence arrives, just as a man who has grown used to certain material comforts feels vexed and miserable when these are removed.²⁵

Nor is it true that the negative pleasure, in the case of the cessation of these customary states, is less enduring than the negative pain. The negative feeling lasts in each case precisely as long as the recollection of the previous state. Even allowing that the idea of a lost source of enjoyment forces itself on the imagination with greater persistence than that of a past source of pain (which is by no means self-evident), still, inasmuch as the will in its control of the ideas naturally discourages the state of desire in the first instance, while it fosters the feeling of relief in the second, the balance would surely seem to lean the other way.²⁶

Let us now pass for an instant to another of Hartmann's ideas, touching the relation of negative pleasures to pains. As we have seen, he thinks that the nervous exhaustion accompanying both pleasure and pain, while adding to the positive pain, lessens and curtails the positive pleasure, and further, while intensifying the negative pleasure of relief, dulls the negative pain which arises through the cessation of pleasure. The first thing to remark on this doctrine is that it directly tells against the foregoing arguments in favour of negative pains being so much greater than negative pleasures. This obvious fact seems to be quite overlooked by the author, who roughly lumps together these arguments as telling in different ways for the predominance of pain above pleasure.²⁷ The theory of nervous exhaustion serves, as is obvious, to give a special value to positive pains as against positive pleasures, since it involves an intensification of all prolonged pains, and a weakening of all prolonged pleasures. Hartmann evidently thinks that this doctrine of nervous exhaustion is a discovery. He dwells on it at great length. It is put forward as a scientific and even as a physiological truth which is favourable to pessimism. It deserves, therefore, a moment's investigation.

Hartmann's doctrine, like a good many other of his ideas, contains an element of truth, but a one-sided and distorted truth. It is true that both pleasurable and painful excitation of nerve may produce fatigue, but it by no means follows that they will do so. Let us first take the case of pleasure. Gentle or moderate pleasure—for example, the murmuring sound of the sea, the moderate fragrance of a garden—may be greatly prolonged without producing sensible fatigue. It is only when the stimulation is intense that there follows the result described by Hartmann. After a long and brilliant musical movement, for example, the ear is oppressed and desires rest. We have a feeling of satiety which renders any further stimulation of the same kind for the time disagreeable. But, again, pleasure may abate without the rise of conscious fatigue. Thus, if we linger for an hour among the odours of a garden, the centres of olfactory sensation are no longer appreciably affected by the stimulation, and we cease to have any conscious impression. This is due, of course, to the action of accommodation referred to just now. We see, then, that the sequence of fatigue on prolonged pleasurable stimulation is true only within very narrow limits.

In the case of painful stimulation it is commonly held that all pain (when not arising from deficiency of stimulation, or from want) is the concomitant of an excitation, which, either through its excessive intensity, or through its unfavourable form, injures and fatigues the nerve. Thus Helmholtz explains the pain of musical discord (after the analogy of flickering light) as resulting from a violent and consequently wearing excitation of the nervous substance. Hence it is simply tautology to say that prolonged pain gives rise to fatigue. All pain does so, and prolonged pain merely in a greater measure. But fatigue accompanies partial exhaustion of the nerve only, not total exhaustion.²⁸ When the injurious excitation reaches a certain pitch and duration, it tends to disable the nerve altogether, and in this case there is no further function at all, pleasurable or painful. Thus injuriously strong light may ‘blind’ the eye, and so produce for the time, at least, total insensibility. In some cases of painful stimulation, as that of tooth-ache, mentioned by Hartmann, this effect of blunting the nerve does not seem to be brought about as soon as one might expect, and thus, as Fechner admits, intense pains seem to be less quickly liable to the effect of blunting than intense pleasures.²⁹ Still, even allowing this to be so, the fact remains that the dulling influence of protracted excitation holds good for both pleasure and pain within certain limits. Once more, if the painful excitation is very moderate in intensity it may, like moderate pleasurable excitation, gradually die away into a faint mode of consciousness, which is neither pleasurable nor painful. The beat of factory machinery, for example, which irritates the ear considerably at first, soon becomes a dull perception, which has no appreciable effect on our feeling.

It must, in the last place, be admitted, as Fechner points out (‘Vorschule der Aesthetik,’ ii. 243), that intense protracted pains do not so easily transform themselves into their opposite as intense protracted pleasures. And here, again, we find a fact that favours Hartmann's views. Intense pains become with protraction less painful, and in time pass into a neutral state of feeling, but they hardly become pleasurable. Yet here, again, there is a counterbalancing fact. Many impressions, which in the first stage are confused and disagreeable, become clear and agreeable when prolonged. All impressions involving novel elements and demanding an effort of intellectual comprehension are disagreeable if momentary, agreeable and increasingly so (within certain limits) when prolonged.

But again, though prolonged single painful impressions do not become pleasurable, painful impressions, when repeated at intervals, not only lose their painfulness, but, within certain limits, actually become pleasurable, for example, the sensations of tobacco, alcoholic drinks, &c. Here we have another principle—that of accommodation or habituation—which tells distinctly in favour of pleasure. Repeated pleasures, if an interval elapses, do not become painful as repeated pains become pleasurable. Of the other effects of habit in making us sensitive to the loss of the customary, enough has already been said.

So far, then, from Hartmann's idea of nervous exhaustion being a discovery which has an important bearing on pessimism, it is involved in the very conception of painful stimulation, and it represents only a very limited truth in respect to pleasure. In brief, nervous fatigue is only a stage in the process of nervous exhaustion; and the fact of nervous exhaustion, taken as a whole, has, at the most, a barely appreciable effect in raising pain above pleasure. And further, even if this effect be allowed, it is fully counterbalanced by other considerations, as that of habituation or accommodation, which tell in favour of pleasure.

One or two other assertions of Schopenhauer and Hartmann relating to pleasure and pain may be just alluded to. Hartmann contends that a given quantity of pain is not exactly compensated for by an equal quantity of pleasure—in other words, we dislike pain more than we like pleasure. His example is that nobody would choose to hear discords for five minutes in order to hear beautiful harmonies for the next five minutes. Perhaps not, though the fact that the pleasure was to succeed the pain, and so to possess the added force of contrast,³⁰ as well as to be the final and enduring impression, would certainly have to be taken into the calculation. But where, one naturally asks, did Hartmann learn that the pleasure in this case is equal to the pain? To a refined musical ear a barbarous discord is a far greater pain than the pleasure of a perfect harmony, if for no other reason, at least for this, that the latter is much more frequently heard than the former. A man who had frequently to listen to jarring discords would very likely receive no more pain from them than pleasure from familiar harmonies, and in this case he might not improbably be perfectly indifferent when Hartmann made his proposal to him.

The assertion that a given intensity of pain is not compensated by an equal quantity of pleasure, will not bear close inspection. There are two ways of effecting such a balance of these opposite feelings. The first and simplest method is to make the antagonistic feelings simultaneous. In this case it will be found that when they are of equal intensity, they tend to neutralise one another, that is, to produce a resultant state of feeling which has a zero-value. This, I conceive, is a fact which anyone can verify for himself. It may be said, indeed, that most people measure ratios of intensity among pleasures and pains solely by help of this mutually counteracting force. It is certainly very difficult to appreciate the relative intensity of a pleasure and a pain apart from such a test; yet by an effort of abstraction it is, I think, possible, in a certain rough fashion, and so far as this is the case, it will be found that masses of pleasurable and painful feeling which are felt apart to be approximately equal in intensity, neutralise one another.

The second mode of comparing the relative worth of pleasures and pains is by presenting them as conjoint and inseparable consequences of one and the same act. In this case, too, it will be found that on the whole opposite feelings of equal intensity just counterbalance one another, and so produce a state of equilibrium, that is, inaction. Yet this case is more complicated and calls for closer examination.

In the first place, the pleasure and pain which are to result from a represented action will not, it may be assumed, be simultaneously experienced. Either the pleasure will follow the pain or vice versâ. Now this circumstance will make a difference according to the temperament and disposition of the particular person concerned. If there is a great interval between the two experiences, the nearer may exert an undue influence on the imagination of an eager, impulsive person, so as partially to veil from view the more remote. On the other hand, in the case of man of cooler temperament, the reflection, already spoken of, that the second experience will continue after the first is over, and that it will have an added value (positive or negative), as a transition from the first, will tend to give this later feeling a higher worth than it would receive on the ground of its intensity alone.

Nevertheless, in spite of these variable influences, one may safely assert that in proportion as the opposite feelings present themselves to the imagination as equi-distant in time, their stimulating effect (either as attracting or as repelling forces) on will and action will be in the direct ratio of their intensities as mental excitations or feelings, and that, if equal in intensity, the active result will be nil. Here, again, I can only bid the reader make the necessary observations for himself.

In this reasoning one thing has been assumed, namely, that in this anticipation feelings of pleasure and pain shall be represented in the exact proportion of their actual intensity as present feelings. Is this condition always fulfilled? Certainly not. We all know that we are apt sometimes to exaggerate the pleasurable at the expense of the painful, at other times to do the exact contrary. We may thus be said to shrink sometimes from pain more than to be drawn to pleasure, and vice versâ. Yet this is only a rough way of expressing the facts, since, strictly speaking, it is the apparent relative magnitudes of the pleasure and pain which undergo a change, not their relative attractive and repellent force. These variations are clearly connected with fluctuations of mental mood and differences of temperament—a subject to be dealt with later on.

Owing to these uncertainties in the direction of imagination, it is not easy to measure pleasures and pains very exactly together in relation to action, for we cannot be sure that the two quantities are present to the mind in the ratio of their actual intensities. Yet by varying the observation amid all changes of mood, one may roughly determine the point at which these deflecting influences of the imagination are at their minimum. And here, it will be found, as I have said, that, equidistance from the present moment being presupposed, pleasures and pains of equal intensity tend just to counteract one another and so to produce a volitional equilibrium.

One may, indeed, put a meaning into the assertion that pleasures and pains of like intensity do not always balance one another. It is a fact, as I hope to show by-and-by, that our relative sensibility to pleasurable and painful stimuli varies considerably, so that pleasant objects which at one time more than compensate us for the pain of attaining them at other times fail to do so, and so on. We may say, then, that given certain internal conditions (namely, a depressed mental tone), the causes or sources of pleasure fail to counteract those of pain in the ratio of their normal or medium values. Yet this advantage on the side of pain is, as I shall show, no constant one. Further, it is manifestly incorrect to say that even in this case a quantity of pain more than balances an equal quantity of pleasure. The pleasure and pain which are felt to be equivalent are still equal in intensity; it is simply the relative value of the external stimuli which has undergone a change.

It appears, then, that the pessimist in vain seeks a ground for his creed in the supposition that pain has some natural advantage over pleasure, owing to which a given intensity of pleasure and of pain leaves the subject worse off than before. We must accept the fact that pain is just as bad as pleasure is good, and no worse than this.³¹

The last point to be alluded to, in connection with the pessimists' theory of pleasure and pain, is the place which ennui fills in their system. Schopenhauer seems to regard ennui as equally fundamental with the state of desire. As soon as the moment's desire is satisfied, and no new scope for volition presents itself, we lapse into ennui. The life which we have willed to possess thus becomes, in the moment of attainment, a burden. Ennui is thus the other bleak and dreary pole of existence, which confronts that of tormenting desire.

Now this view of ennui as something fundamental, seems to me plainly opposed to the facts. The lower animals do not seem to experience ennui. The cessation of desire in their case is followed by a state of quiescence which, by a certain fiction of imagination, perhaps, we are apt to call contentment.³² Ennui begins as soon as imagination, and the power of conceiving pleasurable activities, is sufficiently developed. Thus a dog which, after having been shut indoors some time, sighs as he lies stretched out before the unappreciated kitchen fire, may reasonably be supposed to feel ennui just because it feels a vague longing for outdoor activity. In our own case ennui is clearly connected with a craving for activities which are only faintly defined in the imagination. The child is afflicted with ennui when it indistinctly imagines some grateful occupation without perceiving it as a present possibility. The man of idle life becomes a prey to ennui when he vaguely pictures to himself a more active existence without being roused to shape this longing into a definite purpose.

Ennui thus has for its necessary condition nascent desire and indistinct representation of pleasure. In truth, it may be said to be the penalty inflicted on us for the non-fulfilment of some normal function, or the reminder which is given us by the natural impulse of an organ to discharge its recruited store of energy. Hence, so far from regarding it as primary, and the activity which it is fitted to prompt as secondary, it would be much more correct to view this activity as the primary condition, and ennui as secondary and dependent on this. In short, the activity follows its proper impulse (whether a blind instinct or a conscious desire), and ennui is simply an occasional incident in the process.

THE EMPIRICAL BASIS OF PESSIMISM

In the two preceding chapters I have attempted to show that the scientific basis of pessimism as presented in the writings of Schopenhauer and Hartmann is not a very stable one. Let us now look briefly at the empirical or à posteriori proof which they offer as supplementary to the scientific. In criticising this I shall deal principally with Hartmann, who has elaborated this side of pessimism much more carefully than his predecessor. In fact, as we have seen, Schopenhauer rather despised the argument from observation, though he admitted its possibility and validity, being quite satisfied with his à priori demonstration.

First of all, then, let us look at the way in which Hartmann sets about proving that human life, as it now exists, is a preponderance of misery. We are here at once struck by the fact that the author rejects individual testimony as an untrusworthy source of information on the subject. Men are disposed to magnify the value of life through the very action of unconscious will. This mode of settling the question has at least the merit of boldness. While professing to accept the facts of life as determining its value, the writer cuts off the surest avenue to the facts. And on what grounds? By assuming that very preponderance of evil which he is undertaking to prove. If we already know that life is the product of blind will, and so in its nature misery, and that consequently the belief in happiness is an illusion, one does not see why any examination of the facts of life is required. If, on the contrary, the investigation of facts is to be of any use, we must obviously put aside all prepossessions, metaphysical or other, and simply ask what experience says; and if we do so, I do not see how it is possible to throw overboard individual testimony, which is obviously the only knowledge we have of a large part of human experience. In point of fact, if, by any statistical researches, we could get a sufficient number of individual testimonies as to the worth of life, separating the momentary convictions from the permanent, we should have by far the best empirical data which the problem allows of. It is surely a little arrogant to assume that any single observer's impression respecting the mental condition of others is superior in value to the collective testimony of mankind, so far as it can be obtained, as to their own mental condition.³³ Whether, so far as we can ascertain, men are universally biassed to think too well of life, and never to think ill of it, is a proposition we shall have to deal with later on.

Hartmann, then, resorts to the method of objective observation. He holds that by contemplating the circumstances of men and their various activities, we may reach a sufficiently exact conclusion on the matter. How, then, are we to pursue this line of investigation? Simply in this way. Heap together a number of the leading impulses and dominant circumstances of human life, such as love, anger, ambition, wealth, marriage, friendship, and so on. This miscellaneous pile may stand for life as a whole. In the next place, bring out into strong light all the evils and drawbacks incident to these conditions of life. Touch with the lightest hand possible the accompanying advantages (or, if they are not too palpable, pass them by altogether), sum up the results, and you have a balance in favour of pain. The reader will be inclined to ask whether this is not a gross caricature of Hartmann's procedure. I am persuaded that it is not, and that every careful reader of the argument will find my description to be an accurate one.

In the first place, there is no attempt to take a complete systematic view of human life. The divisions adopted by Hartmann are as arbitrary as they well could be. Here is the list: 1. Health, youth, liberty, and material sufficiency; 2. Hunger and love (a significant juxtaposition in the pessimist's view of life); 3. Pity, friendship, and family happiness; 4. Pride, ambition, and desire for dominion; 5. Religious edification; 6. Immorality; 7. Enjoyments of science and art; 8. Sleeping and Dreaming; 9. Pursuit of wealth (above the satisfaction of wants); 10. Envy, vexation, &c.; 11. Hope. What a classification! the reader may well exclaim. It is plain that there is here not the slightest pretence at giving a psychological basis to the scheme of activities, or at resting the division of circumstances and external conditions on some definite scientific conception of life. The result of such a haphazard arrangement is, of course, that there is no systematic review of life at all.

First of all, there are gross omissions in this scheme. For example, there is no place given to motor activity, as in bodily exercise, manual employments of all kinds. Work is dealt with, it is true, but only as a necessary and painful condition of sustaining bodily life. All kinds of spontaneous bodily activity, from the mechanical experiments of the boy to the adventurous travels of the man, are left out of sight. Again, what must be said of a systematic and exhaustive examination of life which finds no place for any of the modes of sensuous stimulation (apart from art), for the influences of the external world on our fancy and emotion, or for the value of that impulse of laughter which serves to transform all the lighter evils of existence into sources of an after-gaiety, and which may throw a sparkle of light even into some of the gloomiest experiences of life? One need hardly wonder, however, that a pessimist should be a little shy of talking about this fountain of merriment: genuine humour does not find a congenial soil in the pessimist's view of things. But, once more, is it a systematic analysis which includes the effects of immorality, but has no place for the daily fulfilments of obligation of all worthy citizens? Are these fulfilments no source of happiness both to the agent and to others, and is their number so trivial as to justify their omission from the scheme?³⁴ But the reader may safely be left to himself to judge of the deficiencies of this mapping out of life.

Just as it is defective, so it is redundant. Thus the relations of the sexes turn up both under ‘Love’ and under ‘Family happiness,’ and thus the worst ingredient of life, according to the pessimists, may be said to be counted twice over. So, again, the evil of hunger is made to count twice, since it is quietly brought in under work and material sufficiency as the spur that goads men on to dreary labour. Is this quite what one would expect from an accurate inductive reasoner?

If, however, the scheme of life-functions is a faulty one, what shall be said of the way in which the balance is struck in the case of each? There is no pretence to define the point at which we are to place the threshold of enjoyment in the observation of others, and what we are to take to be the indications or expression of a positive state of happiness. In fact, Hartmann's method is essentially a rough one. It disdains niceties of distinction, cares nothing for the medium conditions of human feeling, but simply considers the extremes, that is to say, the more intense degrees of pleasure and pain. This is well illustrated in the case of morality and immorality already alluded to. So it is in the instance of work, which is put down in the gross, as painful, without the faintest attempt to determine whether it can ever be agreeable as when undertaken, as it certainly is every day, without any pressure of bodily necessities. The result of this method is that the value of a very large part of life, namely all that lies between the extremes of pleasurable and painful excitement, is left wholly undetermined, or rather determined beforehand without any investigation worthy of the name.

To glance for a moment or two longer at Hartmann's view of work or active employment, it is plain that, like Schopenhauer, he regards it as a pis aller, as an escape from the torments of ennui. I admit that a good deal of active occuption is entered upon under the stimulus of ennui, even though, as we have seen, this stimulus is nothing primordial but depends itself on the proper forces of active impulse and desire. But is it correct to say that men never engage in active pursuits except under the pressure of ennui? Does not action, in many of its forms, woo us on by presenting itself to our imagination as something positively agreeable? And is this not especially so in the case of children and robust men, whose accumulated muscular energy is ready to discharge itself in pleasurable movement? It is characteristic that Hartmann ignores the possibility of activity being entered on for its own sake. Yet by what other supposition are we to account for the gladness and joyousness of boys as they bound to their arduous sports, or of vigorous men as they take part in the chase or exercise their muscles in long pedestrian rambles? And are not the quieter sorts of muscular activity accompanied, too, by their own form of gratification? Does not the play of the eye in its innumerable daily movements yield us its modest quota of pleasure quite apart from the sensuous impressions which it is the means of securing? All these inquiries are quietly ignored by our author, who follows his ‘inductive path’ with an unsuspecting confidence that becomes at times positively amusing.

Not only does the writer omit to mention the pleasurable exercise of the motor energies of the body, he makes no reference to that quiet gratification which flows in on our minds through the channels of our daily intellectual activity, the satisfaction of the impulses of curiosity, and the ever-varying play of attention as directed to the myriad objects and events of the world about us. It is evident that this intellectual activity fills up a good part of our daily life, entering alike into our leisure and into our business pursuits. Yet Hartmann makes no allusion to it. He does talk, indeed, of the pleasures of science, of which he thinks only a handful of mankind are really capable, but he makes no reference to that universally diffused curiosity which precedes all scientific interest and which counts as a considerable factor even in the life of many of the uncultivated. Our author might, perhaps, say that the languid interest which the average man takes in observing and understanding what goes on about him is but another forced attempt to escape the pangs of ennui. Nevertheless, it might have been worth while to ask how far people, and especially young people, are actuated by a genuine and self-sufficing impulse of curiosity.

Each of the elements just noticed, the pleasure of muscular exercise, and of intellectual activity, enters into much of our daily work, even our necessary work, and seems to give it an appreciable value. Not only so, work derives worth from higher emotional sources. Of these, the most important is the sentiment happily characterised by Mr. Bain as ‘the interest of pursuit.’ There seems to be an enjoyment connected with the very exercise of the volitional apparatus when the end to be gained is not immediate. That people draw a considerable amount of gratification from the mere accomplishment of an aim, may be seen in the readiness with which idle holiday loungers will extemporise, as modes of pastime, artificial ends, just for the pleasure of compassing them. This species of pleasure is an accompaniment of work in the case of every man who has the intelligence and the imagination to anticipate distant results.

Other valuable concomitants of work are the renewed consciousness of energy displayed, of obligation fulfilled, and of the sense of augmented personal dignity which grows out of these feelings. In the case of every reflective and conscientious man these ingredients serve to invest work with a yet higher value.

I am far from saying that work is always pleasurable. It is a trite observation that men are indolent and dislike arduous work, at least on a first view. Also, it is only too manifest that in our present stage of industrial progress the work allotted to men is too often excessive as muscular exertion, and deficient as a source of continuous and varied intellectual interest. I am concerned here merely with showing that work, even when entered on at first with reluctance and from necessity, may under favourable circumstances become the fountain and source of a quiet enjoyment, which, if not intense in any moment, amounts, when diffused over a wide area of life, to a considerable ingredient of happiness. To condemn work, then, in toto, as utterly barren of immediate pleasure, is a scarcely pardonable error.

Not only, however, does the author's method of calculation thus pass over whole tracts of experience which lie in the lower and median latitudes of our emotional life; it even fails to recognise some of the intenser forms of our enjoyments. We see this illustrated in a striking manner in the discussion of health. To Hartmann health is simply a negative condition of happiness, never one of its positive ingredients. He seems to think that the normal fulfilment of the organic functions does not affect consciousness and that thus a high degree of vitality is of worth only as a starting-point for enjoyment.

This view completely overlooks one of the most important, perhaps the most important, ingredient of happiness, namely, what is known as mental tone or the underlying sense of well-being. It is generally agreed among physiologists and psychologists that this fundamental emotional element, which enters into and colours all the day's contacts with the external world, is the product of the condition of the numerous organic processes, such as digestion, circulation, and respiration, together with the state of nourishment and vigour of the various organs, not least among which stands the nervous system itself. According as these bodily conditions are high and flourishing or low and feeble, the mood of the hour may oscillate within very wide limits, from the joyous elation which we experience when the tide of bodily vigour is at its height, to the gloomy depression which overtakes us when it ebbs to the low-water mark. I am not concerned here to determine what is the balance which these rhythmic changes in the vigour of our organism leave in the case of an average healthy man. On this point something will be said by and by. I only refer to it here as an example of Hartmann's ‘calculation.’ One need not, perhaps, wonder that Hartmann should be a little shy in relation to this subject of mental tone. It has, as I hope to show, a very close bearing on the origin and significance of pessimism and optimism alike. Only, he should not seek to foist on us, as a complete calculus of life's pleasures and pains, a method which in reality omits the most fundamental factor of our emotional existence.

After having thus illustrated Hartmann's mode of calculation in the case of morality, active occupation, and health, it is hardly worth while to examine his way of dealing with the other and narrower regions of life. Yet the utterly worthless character of the ‘method’ employed cannot be fully appreciated without a bare allusion to one or two other points. For example, grief over the past is simply mentioned among the feelings which bring nothing but pain, or ‘as good as no pleasure’ to counterbalance the pain. Everybody sees, of course, that grief is pain; but the real question here is obviously whether lost possessions, past good in general, brings more pain than pleasure. Does some lost source of happiness, when it lives in memory, bring more pain than pleasure? That there is an element of pleasure in looking back on some departed joy, even when it is recognised as departed, hardly requires proof. Even in the sadness which steals over us in a far-reaching retrospection there may be found exquisite pulsations of delight, so that we often voluntarily choose to nourish our softened griefs.

The well-known lines:

‘'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all,’

appear clearly enough to express this assurance of a positive satisfaction in the recollection of a departed happiness. Yet of this element of our emotional experience, which serves to make the very evanescence of good a ground for loving it more, Hartmann thinks it quite unnecessary to speak.

One other example of Hartmann's mode of calculation deserves to be mentioned. This is his treatment of vanity and the love of others' approbation. Hartmann distinguishes rightly enough the feeling of self-esteem from the love of external approbation. Of this latter sentiment he says that for a hundred injuries there comes but one gratification. Possibly this is so in the case of those who most greedily desire praise; but is it true of self-complacency? In this case, surely, one may say that a thousand gratifications are not marred by a single disappointment. In fact nothing is more assured and imperturbable than a good self-conceit. It is a perennial source of delicious feeling. It is independent of all external circumstances. Yes, says Hartmann, but it rests on an illusion. No doubt, in many cases, but is all self-esteem illusory? Hartmann's conception of what constitutes an illusion in sentiment is exceedingly curious. Thus he holds that all esteem of others' good opinion is illusory, since this opinion can have no value apart from its effect on their conduct towards us. As well might one say: ‘Beauty rests on an illusion, for what worth can beauty have apart from its bearing on the utilities of life?’ In one case as in the other, the obvious answer is that our emotional nature is so put together that the esteem of others and beauty alike are always felt to be a good. To ask for any further reason why approbation should please us is about as rational as to ask for a reason why we are glad in the morning sunlight.³⁵

The reader is by this time, perhaps, pretty well convinced of the utterly flimsy and meretricious character of Hartmann's examination of human life, so far as this now unfolds itself to our daily observation. Yet, in order still further to justify this view, I would just allude to the omission of the important question how far man is the slave of his circumstances and the mere passive plaything of his daily experience. This omission is, of course, to be expected, from the view of will which we have seen to be adopted by the writer. All that a man does in the way of rising above the level of his life-conditions, of modifying the ultimate worth of life events through the reaction of a bold and elastic spirit and the wise direction both of external observation and of the internal mental operations of imagination and reflection, is plainly effected by means of that very volition which the pessimists condemn as the prime source of life's evils. Into this ingredient in life's value, the extent to which every healthy mind is able to alter the sum of its happiness through an exercise of the highest activities of volition, I shall have to enter somewhat fully by and by. For the present it is enough to notice Hartmann's complete silence respecting the subject.

Passing by Hartmann's examination of the grounds of a hope in a future life, which obviously passes beyond the region of accessible facts, we have now to turn to the second step in the empirical proof of pessimism, namely, the arguments by which the attainment of happiness in the future is shown to be impossible. Life as it now exists is evil, and the progress of things, so far from being towards happiness, is in the opposite direction. The dream of a happy race in the future is but a vain temporary resort of the deluded hoper who finds himself driven from his first position that happiness is now attainable.

It is obvious that the inquiry into the worth of advancing civilisation and of the historical development of mankind cannot well be carried out on empirical data only. It involves numerous and complex scientific data, such as generalisations of history, not to speak of biological conceptions as to the nature and laws of human development. Nevertheless, Hartmann, with whom we are still mainly concerned, trusts for the most part to the same kind of calculation as that employed in measuring the value of contemporary life; and, accordingly, one cannot do better than examine the results here reached in connection with those of the first computation.

The only conception of progress,³⁶ having any pretence to scientific value, which is given us by Schopenhauer and Hartmann as a ground for their unfavourable conclusion, is that of the growth of intelligence, or the gradual emancipation of intellect from will. To make this idea a scientific conception it must, of course, be separated from its metaphysical surroundings. Taken in this light it may be said to represent an accepted truth, namely, that social progress depends to a large extent on intellectual development. But it is manifest that this idea is of no use to the pessimist without the presupposition that life is, in reality, and always must be, a balance of evil. Neither Schopenhauer nor Hartmann asserts that intellectual growth is an evil in itself; it simply brings an increase of misery in its train because it makes an end of all fond illusions. Hence this idea cannot be said to contribute to the proof of the main positions of pessimism. It merely tells us that if pessimism is true, we are, as the world moves along, gradually learning its truth, and so in a fair way of receiving whatever of disappointment, despair, or gloomy quiescence this knowledge is fitted to impart.

At the same time it is well to point out that the idea of human progress as a purely intellectual movement is a bold assumption for which the best and most scientific theories of history afford no sort of ground, but which they rather tend to refute. Even Buckle allowed that social development involved moral as well as other kinds of improvement, though he regarded these as limited by the amount of intellectual advancement. Hartmann, who, as I have observed, looks on the amount of immorality in the world as a constant quantity, cannot, of course, allow that progress has any effect in this direction. But his whole conception of history is manifestly derived from his metaphysical principles, and makes no claim on the serious attention of a scientific mind.

Leaving then the pessimists' view of history as a whole, let us examine the empirical arguments by which Hartmann seeks to show that the world is not improving. The mode of computation adopted here is, as I have said, much the same as that employed in the foregoing inquiry, and consequently we shall be able to pass very quickly over this part of our examination.

In estimating the facts of human progress, Hartmann does not pass again under review his ‘scheme’ of human activities or conditions. He considers that in examining their nature in relation to the possibility of a present human happiness, he has to a large extent demonstrated their unfitness to become the conditions or sources of happiness in any future period of human development. He emphasises more particularly the tendency of progress to bring about disillusion touching the worth of such things as the approval of others. On this head nothing further need be said, and we may pass on to one or two points in reference to which Hartmann makes some appearance of proving as a separate thesis that progress does not involve improvement.

For example, it is commonly supposed that progress, since it includes scientific discovery, includes also the growth of the remedial art, and, consequently, the diminution of disease. This, says Hartmann, with oracular solemnity, is an illusion; sicknesses increase ‘in a more rapid progression’ than their remedies. How do you prove this? the reader may perhaps ask. No answer. Here surely the much-talked of ‘process of calculation’ becomes too microscopic a thing for the limits of ordinary vision.

Again, it is generally believed by the naïve intelligence which has not yet undergone the severe discipline of pessimism, that industrial progress and the discoveries of practical science have done some little to elevate man's material happiness. As to the useful arts, Hartmann does, indeed, make the large concession that they have effected something in this direction. But how much? ‘Manufactures, steam-boats, railways, and telegraphs have achieved nothing positive for the happiness of mankind, they have only lessened a part of the obstacles by which man was heretofore hemmed in and oppressed.’ One naturally asks whether the numerous products of manufacture which enter into the home comfort and luxury of all classes, whether the ability of making an autumn trip to New York and San Francisco, is nothing but the removal of an obstacle to pleasure, and effects nothing in the way of positive gratification. But in bringing his calculation to a close, Hartmann appears to grow rather disdainful of nice distinctions.

But further, even if the increase of material wealth has brought more comfort to certain classes, there will always remain, says Hartmann, that undermost stratum of population which has more hunger than it can satisfy. Why so? the simple reader may ask. Because of the multiplication of the population, which will always go on up to the point of bare physical existence. But are not economists, including even Malthus himself, agreed that population has a tendency to regulate itself with growing intelligence and moral restraint? No answer. Here again, then, we have not the substance but only the shadow of an argument.

Once more, does not social development bring about moral improvement, the growth of sympathy, and so the mutual increase of individual happiness? No, says Hartmann. On the whole, the same ratio of egoism and benevolence is to be found in all ages and in all countries. Civilisation has no effect on the impulses of wrong-doing, it simply alters the form of their manifestation. Moral depravity has simply ‘laid aside the horse's foot and now stalks about in a dress-coat.’ Let us be grateful: here we seem to find something like calculation again. But what kind of calculation? By what possible standard of measurement, it may be asked, does Hartmann prove that the sum of misery growing out of the fierce uncontrolled passions of savage races is equalled by the sum of misery arising from the prudentially restrained but still active immoral tendencies of civilised society? The calculation resolves itself again into the roughest of guesses, which, after reflection, does not even prove to have been a shrewd one. As to the growth of sympathy through the increase of the feeling of solidarity among individuals and even whole peoples, Hartmann hardly condescends to say anything. He does, indeed, tell us that social advance with the growth of social aspiration brings about certain alleviations in the struggle with want through the principle of solidarity; but then he contends that these results are only a diminution of evils, never the attainment of a positive good. As we have seen, Hartmann follows Schopenhauer in regarding sympathy as having to do with suffering only, and does not recognise it under the form of a mutual participation in pleasurable activity.

Finally, it may be asked what Hartmann says respecting the influences of advancing science and art on human happiness. May not these at some distant time, when extensively studied and appreciated, yield a considerable surplus of enjoyment? Theoretical (as distinguished from practical) science is regarded by our author only in its bearing on external good, including moral relations, and is said to effect no appreciable result either in material or moral wellbeing. The enjoyments to be derived from the pursuit of science are not dwelt on here. In treating of the first stage of the illusion, however, Hartmann tells us that with the growing division of labour in science the joy of original discovery will be reduced to a vanishing quantity. This is a bold assertion, since it might appear to an ordinary intelligence that the spread of scientific activity over a much larger field would involve an increase in any enjoyment connected with this activity. It is plain, however, that Hartmann assigns no importance to the pleasures connected with the receptive side of scientific study (which he thinks are more than counterbalanced by the pains of effort), and that the pleasure of science is with him, as with Schopenhauer, the intense delight which is the peculiar prerogative of creative genius. Such an arbitrary limitation does not call for further remark.

With respect to art, our author allows that ‘the receptive enjoyment’ (as distinguished from the productive) is a considerable quantity. Yet he does not enter on the inquiry how far this may in the future become an ingredient of the daily life of all classes of society. All that he says with respect to the progress of art is that it is not to be over-estimated, since though our modern art is richer in ideas it is less perfect in form than classic art. This, of course, does not prove much, since it is a question whether the step from Greek to contemporary art is to be taken as a link in the chain of art-progress. What one really wants to know, is not whether a certain people in antiquity reached a development of art which is as high as any modern development, but (a) whether there is a general tendency for art to improve as national life as a whole, and the human race move onward; (b) whether this same social development is not accompanied by a general growth of artistic sense; and (c) whether this twofold æsthetic advance does not involve a very large addition to the sum of human enjoyment. But this is not the first time we have found Hartmann displaying a singular skill in missing the true import of a question.

Enough, perhaps more than enough, has been said to show what Hartmann's process of observation and calculation with respect to the several constituents of human and social progress really amounts to. It has even less pretensions to a rigorous method than the process underlying the investigation of human life in its statical aspect as something coexisting and persisting at the present time. But, in truth, both modes of examination may alike be said to make but the very feeblest pretence to the character of exact numerical computation. Hartmann's method differs, indeed, only in form from that rough mode of heaping together a few arbitrarily selected features of life which may be said to mark the boundary of unreasoned and reasoned pessimism. With very much parade of scientific method, it is essentially unscientific, inexact, superficial, and strongly suggestive of a pre-existing unreasoned conviction.³⁷

Notes

1. The very coexistence of the two terms, consciousness and self-consciousness, seems to point to a distinction between the things denoted by them.

2. For a fuller illustration of this position see Mr. Bain's clear and masterly discussion of consciousness (The Emotions and the Will, p. 539 seq.). The complexity of the idea of self, which is an element of self-consciousness, is well shown in M. Taine's skilful analysis (‘De l'Intelligence,’ livre troisième, chapitre premier).

3. I do not here go into the curious question what number of feelings or ideas can be simultaneously embraced by attention. It should be remembered that what we call simultaneous acts of attention commonly involve many swift alternations in the direction of this activity.

4. This degree is not, of course, a constant quantity, but varies in the direct ratio of the degree of mental preoccupation.

5. Helmholtz is not very confident in affirming the existence of unconscious mental operations, in the strict sense of the phrase. He tells us that he chooses the name ‘unconscious inferences’ for the processes of visual perception because in their result they are precisely similar to conscious reasonings. For the rest he appears to mean by unconscious mental operations those which ‘do not stand under the rule of our selfconsciousness and our will.’ These include the processes of ideal reproduction according to the laws of association. (See ‘Physiologische Optik,’ pp. 430, 448, 449, and 804.)

6. It may be well to observe, however, that, as Mill has shown, the fact of not remembering a mental process does not demonstrate its non-existence as a nascent fugitive mental operation.

7. It matters not for our present purpose whether these repetitions are confined to the life of the individual, or must be interpreted as extending through the collective experience of the race.

8. Since this was written my attention has been called to an able refutation of the hypothesis of unconscious mental operations by Dr. Franz Brentano (‘Psychologie,’ Book II. ch. ii.). The author, who directs his arguments more especially against Hartmann, contends that such unconscious mental events are inferrible neither as causes of later conscious phenomena (as in rapid chains of reasoning), nor as the effects of physical processes which do not affect consciousness (as in the case emphasised by Sir W. Hamilton, namely, the operation of sensory stimuli whose intensity falls below the threshold of conscious sensation). The reader will see that the argument in the text follows much the same line, though I gladly admit that Dr. Brentano has the advantage of me with respect to the classification of the arguments.

   Among other recent discussions of this question, the reader may be referred to Wundt (‘Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie,’ cap. 18), Maudsley (‘The Physical of Mind,’ especially p. 94 seq. and p. 241 seq.), and G. H. Lewes (‘The Physical Basis of Mind,’ problem iii. ch. iv.). Mr. Lewes seems clearly enough to exclude the idea of mental life absolutely destitute of consciousness. He would reserve the term ‘unconscious’ for the vague undiscriminated mass of feeling (sentience) which he regards as the correlate of a large part of the nervous processes of the moment. How far Mr. Lewes is right in saying that all nervous action (neurility) has its subjective side (feeling or sentience), is a nice question which does not specially concern us here. So far as I understand the writer, all such subjective phenomena do somehow affect consciousness, even though they are not differentiated into distinct sensations.

9. Every earnest psychologist must deeply regret the mischief wrought by this idea of unconscious mental processes in contemporary psychology, together with the dependent science of æsthetics. It must be evident that this idea is exactly fitted to play the part of a deus ex machinâ, whenever we are ignorant of the facts and yet unwilling to wait for real light. For, after all, a resort to this hypothesis does but proclaim the writer's ignorance of facts, while the unverifiable nature of the hypothesis—which consideration of itself should warn off the true friends of science—allows of every kind of intellectual prank in this territory. Readers of contemporary German literature, especially æsthetic criticism, will not need illustrations of the darkening influences of this idea.

   A striking example of the thoroughly unscientific character of this resort to unconscious mental processes is to be found in Hartmann's account of the sexual emotion. Following Schopenhauer, he first of all seeks to surround the phenomenon to be accounted for with a factitious halo of mystery. The impulse which makes a lover choose a particular individual, and erect the same into an object of absorbing passion, is said to be something too vast, too profound, to be accounted for by conscious motives, even when aided by a powerful bodily instinct. (By the way, Hartmann and Schopenhauer alike give a most inaccurate version of the action of the amatory passion, as when they state that people invariably choose those who are physically and morally complementary to themselves.) Thus, a miracle is constructed out of a phenomenon which admits, even in the present state of our psychological and biological knowledge, of a properly natural and scientific explanation. Accordingly, we must have a worker of miracles in the shape of the Unconscious, which is always conveniently waiting behind phenomena, and is ready to appear at a moment's notice. The fact of a man's choosing a particular woman as his lover is too profound a mystery to be cleared up by properly psychological considerations, such as individual tastes, acquired and inherited, the effects of early associations, the varying impressibility of the emotional mind at different seasons and under different circumstances, and so on. It must be referred to the magical influence of an unconscious purpose, namely, the intention to create a new, complete, and typical member of the species. Common sense naturally asks how many children conform to this perfect type? also, how far the particular direction of love is, after all, a matter of accident as far as the lover is concerned? But Hartmann, like Schopenhauer, sees in the movements of this passion a fine subject for his supernatural and occult mode of ‘explanation,’ and common sense must not dare intrude itself into the dim religious light of this region.

10. See the distinction drawn by Mr. G. H. Lewes between the ‘extra-sensible’ and the ‘supra-sensible’ (‘Problems of Life and Mind,’ vol. i. prob. i. ch. iii.).

11. The opposite supposition, that physical science teaches the existence of an entity, force, clearly arises from a confusion of the functions of science and metaphysic. The most remarkable expression of this confusion known to me is to be met with in a recent work by Professor Birks entitled ‘Modern Physical Fatalism.’ In this volume (p. 137 seq.) it is said, ‘It is in the region of the noumenon, and not the phenomenon, … of things, and not sensations, … of localised forces, and not of outward appearances, … that the chief discoveries of modern physics have their native home.’ And then the writer goes on to assert that it was when Newton no longer confined his view to phenomena, but directed his attention to the noumenal forces underlying these, ‘that the greatest step of advance was made in the progress of physical science which had ever occurred from the beginning of time.’

12. The existence of will in inanimate nature can thus never be supported by science. If maintained at all, it must be on grounds which are metaphysical, not scientific. The common ground of affirmation is that in the resistance made by an external object to my bodily effort the existence of will-force other than my own is immediately intuited. This has recently been defended with much ardour in a very curious work entitled, ‘Philosophy without Assumptions,’ by the Rev. T. P. Kirkman. Into this side of the question I cannot enter, as it obviously lies outside the scope of science properly so-called. The logical value of the argument is, I conceive, adequately dealt with by J. S. Mill in his ‘Logic,’ book iii. chap. v. § 9.

13. The question of the action of mind on body is not involved here, since the volitional process itself may be conceived as the concomitant of a simultaneous cerebral process. Further, I do not here inquire what is the precise content of volitional consciousness, and how far the actual motor innervation is preceded by a representation of the feelings accompanying motor innervation and muscular contraction.

14. The thoroughly unscientific character of Hartmann's procedure appears in almost a startling light in his forced attempt to apply the calculus of probabilities to the problem of accounting for organic effects. Suppose we have to account for a given phenomenon, M. Let1/x represent the probability that it is produced by some material cause; then the probability of a mental cause is 1-1/x. Now, if we are unable to find a material or mechanical cause, 1/x becomes an infinitesimal quantity, and so the alternative probability approximates to unity, which stands for certainty. The cool assumption that the biologist has a choice between material and mental causes, and the further assumption that the fact of our present ignorance of the material cause of a phenomenon makes the existence of such a cause infinitely improbable, sufficiently indicate Hartmann's qualifications as an exponent of science. For a scathing exposure of the unscientific nature of this teleological reasoning, and of its essential unity with the crude superstitious inferences of the savage, see Lange's ‘Geschichte des Materialismus,’ book ii. part ii. chap. iv., ‘Darwinismus und Teleologie.’

15. In giving an account of Hartmann's doctrine in the Fortnightly Review, a few months ago, I wrote: ‘The completeness of Hartmann's failure to establish his extra-conscious mind on a foundation of physiological science, may be seen, perhaps, in the fact that no man of scientific reputation has cared to deal with his arguments, whereas men of no great scientific power have not only attempted to upset Hartmann's position, but have really succeeded in doing so. We refer especially to the rather loose but effective attack made by Dr. Stiebeling in his Naturwissenschaft gegen Philosophie, which a disciple of Hartmann has thought it well to answer step by step; and to the strictures made on Hartmann's scientific conclusions by W. Tobias in his work, “Die Grenzen der Philosophie.” A much more thoughtful demonstration of the untenability of Hartmann's biological assumptions, and of their essentially unscientific nature, may be found in a work entitled Das Unbewusste vom Standpunkt der Physiologie und Descendenztheorie (Berlin, 1872).’

    In the last work it is suggested that a good part of Hartmann's system was put together before the author had studied Darwin. To this it must now be added that Hartmann's qualifications as a student of natural science have been just tested by no less an authority in biological science than Professor Oscar Schmidt. In a little volume entitled ‘Die naturwissenschaftlichen Grundlagen der Philosophie des Unbewussten,’ Schmidt examines the basis of natural science which Hartmann boasts of having given to his system, and the result is sufficiently disastrous to Hartmann's pretensions. The critic proves that Hartmann has again and again resorted to writers on biological subjects now recognised as valueless, just as though they were on a level with the latest authorities. He further fastens on Hartmann a number of inaccuracies as to statement of fact which prove that his scientific reading must have been one-sided and hasty. Finally, in an able review of Hartmann's whole method of interpreting biological phenomena, as growth, reproduction, and the development of species, Schmidt brings to light the essentially unscientific character of Hartmann's stand-point. He charges Hartmann with credulity and even an inclination to superstition, and affirms that by the supernatural mechanism of his Unconscious he simply manages ‘to cover with a word an incorrectly observed phenomenon, or what is unknown, that is, not yet sufficiently investigated.’ Particularly able is Schmidt's answer to Hartmann's attack on Darwinism. To quote the critic's own concluding words:

    ‘The Philosophy of the Unconscious lays claim to possessing a principle standing above those of the natural sciences, to contemplating the world from the height of modern research, and to having gained, according to the inductive method, results which extend beyond the knowledge of science.

    ‘We have proved that the Philosophy of the Unconscious has not been equal to sifting the facts and data which are at its service, to distinguishing what is doubtful from what is accepted as certain, what is a false interpretation from what is a natural one; nay, that, for the sake of a principle handed down from the past, it sacrificed progress to obsolete theories which have been overpowered by natural science.

    ‘Thus, to its induction there is wanting the first condition, exactness of the assumptions out of which the combination is to be made, and the general laws and principles are to be inferred. The latter, therefore, have no claim on our recognition any more than the deductive conclusions.

    ‘The sciences of the organic world, which the Philosophy of the Unconscious wishes to take under its wings, decline its protection and even its comradeship. They suffice for themselves. They are so far natural philosophy as they independently, according to their method, draw conclusions respecting the causes and the connection of the phenomenal world.’

16. That Schopenhauer was lacking in the essentials of the severe and moderate scientific spirit appears from numerous passages in the biography already referred to. His generalisations are often exceedingly hasty and flimsy, as, for example, that intellect comes from the mother and will from the father.

17. One may add that an element of belief is also included among the intellectual ingredients of volition.

18. Dr. Ferrier has recently attempted to assign the physiological counterpart of this distinguishing function of self-control. He considers that there are special centres of inhibition in the cortical substance of the brain which come into play in the higher acts of volition (‘The Functions of the Brain,’; p. 282 seq.). It is clear that this function of self-restraint is greatly assisted by the regulating action of attention, which may be viewed as the highest development of volitional activity.

19. While thus sharply separating desire from pleasurable anticipation, I am ready to admit that they shade off into one another by very fine gradations. Thus, during a prolonged series of volitions, the pleasurable anticipation often alternates with fleeting pulsations of desire proper. We are too eager to possess the reality, and so the anticipation becomes feeble, and with it volition fails for an instant. Again, in states of desire the moments of anticipation and longing often alternate, so that it is difficult to say whether the whole state is painful or pleasurable, or exactly balanced between the two. Finally, the imaginative anticipation of a possible or fanciful delight may be nothing but a passing palpitation of feeling, which is nearly a pure ideal pleasure rising neither to a state of definite assurance, as in volition, nor to that of longing.

20. It is, I am aware, not unusual in mental philosophy to extend the term desire to active impulse of all kinds. Yet I have, I think, good authority in retaining the narrower and classic denotation (cf. desidero, desiderium). However this be, it is all-important to distinguish the thing here referred to from painless unimpeded volitional impulse. The argument of the pessimists manifestly owes its plausibility to the fallacious assumption that desire in the narrow sense (Begehren) is the type of all propelling force in conscious action.

21. For a historical sketch of this doctrine see M. Léon Dumont's interesting volume, Théorie Scientifique de la Sensibilité, première partie, chap. ii., I. ‘Théorie Epicurienne.’

22. These previous experiences may of course be conceived as ancestral, in which case the idea of the enjoyment would precede the experience of the reality in the individual life. I do not, however, think it probable that ideas of pleasure and pain are transmitted to descendants with any degree of distinctness. It would follow from this that instinctive active impulses (including inherited desires) do not involve clear representations of the ends to be realised.

23. I do not here enter into the question how, on this view, the earliest volitions arise. To say that the first volition presupposes both a knowledge of pleasure (independently of will) and, further, a knowledge that this pleasure will follow the present volition, involves no real contradiction, if we suppose the connection between the pleasure and the volition to have been first disclosed through spontaneous and accidental action. Mr. Bain's derivation of will illustrates in an admirable way how these two apparently antagonistic facts may be reconciled.

24. That this involves no contradiction will be seen by the reflection that a sick person may derive a positive gratification from the recognition of a mere diminution of pain. This gratification, moreover, is not to be referred wholly to the anticipation of health and its accompanying enjoyments; for it may be seen when there is no such prospect. The whole state may be painful, but the conviction of partial relief is itself an element of positive pleasure.

25. This fact is well brought out by Fechner, in his new and interesting work, ‘Vorschule der Aesthetik,’; vol. ii. pp. 243, 244.

26. It is but another form of this fallacy respecting negative pleasure to say that all pleasure of satisfaction is necessarily momentary, whereas that of dissatisfaction or desire is enduring. This is by no means self-evident if we reckon the influence of the higher volition on thought and feeling. But even were it so, would not the fact be counterbalanced by the consideration that the pain following enjoyment is often momentary as compared with that enjoyment? Another of Hartmann's arguments is that dissatisfaction of will always forces itself into consciousness, while the satisfaction of will does not. This, of course, rests wholly on the hypothesis of unconscious will. Apart from this, the fact that nonexisting potential desire when actually satisfied yields no pleasure is exactly balanced by the other fact that potential desire when not actually satisfied gives no pain. In other words, the fact, for example, that when surrounded by friends I am not conscious of a gratification of a desire for companionship is paralleled by the fact that where there is no desire for companionship solitude is no pain.

27. The reader will see that the present argument is used by Hartmann to bring out the extent of negative pleasure as opposed to positive pleasure; whereas the foregoing arguments are employed to elevate negative pains above negative pleasures, the pains of desire above the pleasures of relief.

28. Hartmann just alludes to the fact of total exhaustion, but does not go into the subject so as to show how it limits the action of fatigue.

29. It is possible that these persistent pains, as tooth-ache, ear-ache, &c., involve the injurious action of a plurality of nervous fibres, so that there is a certain amount of alternation in the stimulation of each element. Protracted tooth-ache certainly seems to spread over a large area of nerve.

30. Fechner has made important use of the effect of contrast among two or more successive impressions as intensifying the later, and not the earlier, in its bearing on æsthetic laws (Vorschule der Aesthetik, vol. ii. chap. xxxvii., ‘Princip des aesthetischen Contrastes,’ &c.).

31. I do not here raise the question whether the average or the maximum intensity of pain exceeds that of pleasure. Some of the last century optimists (e.g. Hartley and Adam Smith), appear to have conceded both of these points. The question does not readily admit of solution. It is obvious that in relation to the worth of life, this point would have to be discussed in connection with a second, namely the comparative frequency of pleasures and pains.

32. I do not mean by this that the average emotional condition of the lower animals in their hours of quiescence is of a perfectly neutral complexion: on the contrary, I hold that in the case of a healthy organism there is a considerable average balance of pleasurable sensation.

33. Schopenhauer, though not wanting in boldness, does not reach this height. He frequently appeals to individual testimony, and his empirical proof of pessimism seems to resolve itself into the uniform testimony of men reflecting on their past life. As we have seen, too, much older complainers of life were quite ready to appeal to human testimony. Hartmann is too shrewd not to know that testimony is not uniformly in favour of pessimism, and thus he is forced to abandon this particular argument.

34. Hartmann does, indeed, just allude to one part of morality, namely, benevolence, as a source of benefit to others, but only to dismiss it as being necessarily connected with self-sacrifice (!). He seems to think that the ordinary fulfilment of duty leaves the agent at the zero point of happiness.

35. The fallacy into which Hartmann here falls arises from his inability to see the distinction between dependent and immediate value. When an object has the value of utility (in its narrow sense), or any similar mode of objective value over and above the feeling it excites in the beholder, we can, of course, speak of any particular estimate as real and correct or as unreal and illusory. Thus, a person's opinion of himself may obviously be illusory, because his proper worth is something objective, that is, rests on certain external relations existing between himself and his fellow-men. On the other hand, value which has no other basis but immediate feeling can never be illusory. At the very least, it is real for the person who is the subject of the feeling, and, if the habit of feeling be general, it is ‘objectively’ real too. The approbation of others is clearly something which possesses this immediate value.

36. I am compelled to use this term in spite of its associations with improvement. The reader will be good enough to understand that it is here employed not as ‘a question-begging epithet,’ but simply as an expression for the kind of change brought about by the general movement of affairs, and more especially for the direction manifested by social change.

37. Hartmann's pessimism is dealt with in a not unjustifiable tone of irony in a recently published work, Der Moderne Pessimismus, by Dr. E. Pfleiderer. Pertinent objections to its reasonings are also to be found, as I have observed, in Johannes Huber's Der Pessimismus, and in Volkelt's Das Unbewusste und der Pessimismus. Finally, Professor Bona Meyer, in a little work entitled Weltelend und Weltschmerz, brings to bear on it what some may think an unnecessary gravity of argument. It has already been remarked that Dühring seeks to meet and to upset the pessimist's view of human life and of the future prospects of the race.