Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  “In vain thy mistress’ heart to bend,

  The gold into her lap dost throw;

  Love must for nought her raptures lend,

  If thou love’s joys wilt truly know.”

  And then, what holds good of the purchased possession of women far more than of spontaneous surrender, that hereby, and in its consequences for her whole life, the woman experiences far more of pain than the purchasing man can ever obtain of pleasure. So far, then, as riches lead to the desire for women, and increase ambition and love of domination, they are absolutely detrimental to life-happiness. Still more pernicious, however, does the acquisitive instinct become if it forgets that property is only an intrinsically worthless means to further ends, and regarding it as end in itself, turns into covetousness and avarice. Then, indeed, just as ambition and love themselves, it rests only on illusion, and becomes through the insatiableness of the instinct, whose thirst is extinguished by no satisfaction, whose least non-satisfaction, however, causes pain, a true torment.

  If nothing could be added to the foregoing, the real importance of the acquisitive instinct for the happiness of life would be exhausted with protection from future want and with the procuring of the pleasures of science and art together with the gratifications of the palate; in that case we should have to ascribe to this impulse rather an economic value as an instinct careful for the evolution of humanity, than of direct importance for the welfare of those concerned; but we have not yet mentioned its most important function in the latter respect, to wit, the making life comfortable. The keeping of servants, equipages, comfortable dwellings in town and country, of majordomos and stewards, what is the object of it all except to make life comfortable? For the value of luxury as such is always wholly illusory.

  But is comfort a positive pleasure, or does its agreeableness not rather consist in the removal of discomfort and reduction of the same to the threshold of sensation? Active motion, exercise, effort, and labour are disagreeable; passive motion and repose, on the contrary, are comfortable; but although one may understand how effort and motion may produce pain by means of the invasion of bodily health caused by the expenditure of force, yet it is absolutely unintelligible how repose, unchanged persistence, is to produce a positive pleasure; it can manifestly only represent the zero-point of sensation.

  We accordingly come, strange to say, in the case of that which excites the greatest envy, wealth, to the same negative result as in the case of the bare prolongation of existence wherewith we began. This is certainly significant and characteristic for the worth of life.

  It is beyond a doubt that the acquisitive impulse can always only be means to further ends, and its value must be measured by their value; but that in no case can it lay claim to intrinsic worth, and that, when it does so, it immediately falls into the rank of illusory impulses that produce an excess of pain. Compare on this Luke xii. 15: “Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth;” and Matt. vi. 19–21 and 24–34.

  11. Envy, Jealousy, Chagrin, Pain and Lamentation for the Past, Repentance, Hatred, Vindictiveness, Anger, Sensitiveness, and other qualities and passions of which common sense, sees that they bring more pain than pleasure (comp. vol. ii. pp. 36–37), I need not specifically notice, especially as there is reason to hope that, as time goes on, they will be more and more suppressed by the reason. In estimating the present state of the world they still, however, weigh heavily in the balance.

  12. Hope.

  “And, however hard the burden,

  That he faint not by the way,

  Hope with dreams of bliss enduring

  Feeds him till his dying day!”

  However ill it goes with man, so long as a spark of vital force glows within him, he clings to hope of future happiness. Were there no hope in the world, despair would be the order of the day, and notwithstanding the instinct of self-preservation and the fear of death, we should have to record innumerable suicides.

  Thus hope is the necessary auxiliary instinct of the self-preserving impulse; it is that which alone renders possible for us poor fools the love of life in defiance of our understanding.

  Hope is a trait of character. There are people who from natural disposition always see the future black, others who always regard it of rosy hue (Dyskoly and Eukoly). Eukoly springs from a certain elasticity of the mind, an abundance of energy and vitality, which is not diminished by the most palpable experiences, and after the heaviest strokes of fate raises its head with the old spirit. No quality of character is so dependent on the general bodily constitution and the influences of the blood-circulation on the nerves and brain as this tendency to look hopefully upon the future. No quality of character, however, is so important in respect to the subjective influence of thought in considering the question of the worth or worthlessness of life. As now manifestly, even with the greatest worthlessness of life, hope is a useful instinct (whilst, on the other hand, if life really possessed a value, one could not see what would be the utility of a gloomy view as a mental characteristic), we must be extremely on our guard against a corruption and perversion of our judgment by the former instinct.

  Without doubt hope is a very real pleasure. But what, then, does one hope? Unquestionably to catch and retain pleasure. But if happiness is not to be had, because, as long as one lives, pain always preponderates over pleasure, it follows that hope is a contradiction and worthless; that it is indeed the illusion κaτ’ έξoχήν; that its function is just to dupe us, i.e., to make fools of us, in order only that we may endure to perform our yet uncomprehended task. But he who has once acquired the conviction that hope itself is as worthless and illusory as its object, must very soon find his instinct of hope enfeebled and depressed by this cognition of the understanding; the only thing which still remains possible to him as object of hope is not the greatest possible happiness, but the least possible unhappiness. This was already seen by Aristotle (Eth. Nicom., vii. 12): Therewith, however, all positive significance is stripped from hope.

  But even he who never, or not completely, has discovered the illusory meaning of hope, might yet, at least for his past (for instinct only misleads him as regards the future), be compelled to allow that nine-tenths of all hopes, nay, far more, are frustrated, and that in most cases the bitterness of disappointment was greater than the sweetness of hope. The correctness of this assertion is confirmed by the rule of common prudence that our expectation should always be at a minimum, as only in that case are we able fully to enjoy what good there is in things, and otherwise the immediate enjoyment of the present time might be impaired by the deceived expectation. Consequently for the instinct of hope also the result is yielded that it is both illusory, and within the sphere of its special illusions rather brings more pain than pleasure.

  13. Resumé of the First Stage of Illusion. —Suppose it lay in the nature of the will to produce, as it were, in gross an equal amount of pleasure as of pain, yet the net result of pleasure and pain would in general be modified unfavourably to pleasure by the following five factors:—

  (a.) Nervous fatigue increases the repugnance to pain, diminishes the effort to retain pleasure; thus increases the pain of pain, diminishes the pleasure in pleasure.

  (b.) The pleasure which arises through the cessation or remission of a pain cannot by a long way balance this pain, and of this kind is the largest part of existing pleasure.

  (c.) Pain thrusts itself on consciousness, which must feel it; not so pleasure, which must, as it were, be discovered and inferred by consciousness, and is therefore very often lost to consciousness where the motive for its discovery is wanting.

  (d.) Satisfaction is short and quickly fades; pain endures, so far as it is not limited by hope, so long as desire exists without satisfaction (and when does not such exist?).

  (e.) Equal quantities of pleasure and pain united in a consciousness are not of equal value; they do not compensate one another, but pain remains in excess, or
the exclusion of every sensation is preferred to the questionble union.

  These five items produce by their co-operation approximately the same result as if pleasure, as Schopenhauer deems, were something negative, unreal, and pain the alone positive and real.

  If one considers the several phases of life, the various desires, impulses, ambitions, passions, and states of mind, they fall, according to their importance as conducive to real happiness, into the following groups:—

  (a.) Such as bring only pain, or as good as no pleasure at all (comp. No. II).

  (b.) Such as represent only the zero-mark of sensation, or the level of life, the privation of certain kinds of pain, as health, youth, liberty, a competence, comfort, and in largest part also communion with one’s fellows, or sociality.

  (c.) Such as have a real importance only as means to ends lying beyond them, whose value therefore can only be measured by the value of these ends, which, however, regarded as ends in themselves, are illusory, e.g., striving after possessions, power, and honour, partly also sociality and friendship.

  (d.) Such as bring indeed a certain pleasure to the actor, but to him or the sufferers a pain far outweighing this pleasure, so that their total effect, and reciprocity being supposed, also the effect for all concerned is pain. e.g., wrong-doing, lust of power, choler, hate and vindictiveness (even so far as they keep within the bounds of right), sexual seduction, and the food-instinct of flesh-eaters.

  (e.) Such as, on the average, cause those experiencing them far more pain than pleasure, e.g., hunger, sexual love, love of children, compassion, vanity, ambition, lust of fame, lust of power, hope.

  (f.) Such as rest on illusions, which must be seen through in the progress of mental development, whereupon then indeed the pain arising through them is just as much diminished as the pleasure, but the latter far more speedily, so that hardly anything remains of it, e.g., love, vanity, ambition, lust of fame, religious edification, hope.

  (g.) Such as are perceived with clear consciousness as evils, and yet are voluntarily undertaken in order to avoid other evils that are regarded as still greater (no matter whether they are so or not), e.g., work (instead of want and ennui), marriage, adopted children, and also the surrendering oneself to those impulses, of which one has perceived that they bring preponderating pain, the suppression of which, however, is regarded as still more tormenting.

  (h.) Such as bring preponderating pleasure, although a pleasure purchased by more or less pain, e.g., art and science, which, however, fall to the lot of relatively few, and with still fewer meet with a genuine love for and capacity of enjoying them; which few, again, are just those individuals who feel more acutely the other sorrows and pains of life.

  In all this one should bear constantly in mind the assertion of Spinoza, “that we neither endeavour after, will, yearn for, nor desire anything because we hold it to be good, but rather that we hold it to be good because we endeavour after, will, yearn for, and desire it” (Eth., pt. 3, prop. 9, obs.), and always and everywhere apply this truth as corrective to one’s emotional judgment rebelling against the results of rational reflection.

  If, then, we put together the general and special considerations, there emerges the undoubted result that at present pain not only preponderates in the world in general to a high degree, but also in each single individual, even him who is placed in the most favourable circumstances conceivable. It further follows that the less sensitive individuals, and those endowed with a more obtuse nervous system, are better off than the more sensitive natures, because with the less amount of the perceived pleasure and pain the difference in favour of pain also becomes less. This thoroughly agrees with empirical observation in the case of man, and has, however, universal validity on account of its deductive character, so that it may be extended also to animals and plants.

  It is in accordance with experience that the individuals of the lower and poorer classes and of ruder nations are happier than those of the elevated and wealthier classes and of civilised nations, not indeed because they are poorer and have to endure more want and privations, but because they are coarser and duller. One need only remember “the shirt of the happy man,” in which story there lies a deep truth. And accordingly I also maintain that the brutes are happier (i.e., less miserable) than man, because the excess of pain which an animal has to bear is less than that which a man has to bear. Only think how comfortably an ox or a pig lives, almost as if it had learned from Aristotle to seek freedom from care and sorrow, instead (like man) of hunting after happiness. How much more painful is the life of the more finely-feeling horse compared with that of the obtuse pig, or with that of the proverbially happy fish in the water, its nervous system being of a grade so far inferior! As the life of a fish is more enviable than that of a horse, so is the life of an oyster than that of a fish, and the life of a plant than that of an oyster, until finally, on descending beneath the threshold of consciousness, we see individual pain entirely disappear.

  On the other hand, the higher sensibility sufficiently explains why men of genius are so much more unhappy in their lives than ordinary men, to which must be added (at least among reflective geniuses) the penetration of most illusions. This is in accordance with the result of the foregoing examination, which taught us that the individual is so much the better off the more he is entangled in the illusion created by the instinctive impulse (“He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”—Ecclesiastes); for, in the first place, it has corrupted his judgment on the true proportion of past pleasure and pain, and in consequence he feels his misery less, and is not so oppressed by this feeling of misery; and, secondly, there remains to him in every direction the happiness of hope, whose partial frustration is quickly followed by new hopes, whether in the same or in another direction. He lives, therefore, always in dreamland, and in all present misery consoles himself with the illusion which promises him a golden future. (Käthchen von Heilbronn or Mr. Micawber in “David Copperfield” will readily occur to the reader.)

  This felicity of the illusive reverie is especially characteristic of youth. Every youth, every girl, regards him or her self more or less as the hero or the heroine of a romance, and they console themselves for their present misfortunes or reverses, as in their novel-reading, with the prospect of the radiant conclusion; only with the difference that it never comes, and that they forget that behind the seemingly brilliant conclusion of the story lurks the common drudgery of life.

  Of the rich assortment of youthful hopes, however, with advancing age and experience one after the other is seen to be illusory, and the man is relatively far poorer in illusions than the youth, ambition and the desire of property usually alone remaining.

  These, too, also are perceived to be illusory by the old man, unless ambition ossities into childish vanity, the acquisitive instinct into avarice; and among sensible old men one finds, in fact, no more illusions having reference to the life of the individual, save, of course, the instinctive love of children and grandchildren.

  The result of individual life is, then, that all is surrendered; that, as the Preacher sees, “All is vanity,” i.e., illusory, worthless.

  In the life of humanity this first stage of the illusion and its abandonment is represented by the ancient (Jewish-Greek-Roman) world. In the earlier Asiatic empires the tendencies of life and thought afterwards distinguished are all too intermingled. Mosaism most openly declares the faith in the attainability of individual terrestrial felicity, both in its promises and also in its general optimistic world-view without a transcendent background. In Greece the same tendency is exhibited in a nobler fashion in the enjoyment of art and science, and in a certain æsthetic conception of life. Hellenism also rejoices in an endeavour after a refined individual earthly happiness, since the πολιτεία is merely to afford maintenance and protection. Think of the utterance of the dead Achilles in the “Odyssey” (xi. 488–491)—

  “Speak not lightly to me of death, O famous Odysseus;

  Rather
would I as a serf act as the serf of another,

  A man of little possessions, with scanty means of subsistence,

  Than rule as a ghostly monarch the ghosts of all the departed.”

  The well-known pessimistic chorus in the masterpiece of the aged Sophocles must not be taken as an expression of Hellenic feeling; it and other similar passages, as well as the significant melancholy found in masterpieces of Hellenic art in the midst of all the seeming satisfaction, prove that even at that time gifted individuals were able to peer through the illusions of life, to which the spirit of their own age surrendered itself without the faintest critical reflection.

  The Roman republic certainly adds a new element: the endeavour after happiness in and through the enhancement of the splendour and power of the strict Fatherland. After this effort at the attainment of universal empire proves illusory in respect of felicity, a degraded form of Greek speculation is adopted by Rome in the shape of the shallowest Epicureanism, and the ancient world lingers out its day in the utmost disgust of life.