Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  If we glance at the judgments of the greatest minds of all ages, we find those, who have at all found occasion to express their opinion on the subject, pronouncing the condemnation of life in very decided terms.

  Plato says in the “Apology”: “Now, if death is without all sensation, a dreamless sleep, as it were, it would be indeed a wonderful gain. For I think if any one selected a night in which he had slept so soundly as to have had no dream, and then compared this night with the other nights and days of his life, and after serious consideration declared how many days and nights he had spent better and more pleasantly than this one, that not merely an ordinary mortal, but the great king of Persia himself, would find these but few in number as compared with all his other days and nights.” More clearly and picturesquely it would hardly be possible to state the advantage which, on the average, non-being possesses over being.

  Kant says (Werke, vii. p. 381): “One must indeed make an ill reckoning of the worth of the journey (of life) if one can still wish that it should last longer than it actually does, for that would only be a prolongation of a perpetual contest with sheer hardships.” Page 393, he calls life “a trial-time, wherein most succumb, and in which even the best does not rejoice in his life.”

  Fichte declares the natural world to be the very worst that can be, and is himself only consoled by the belief in the possibility of a preferment to the blessedness of a supersensible world through the medium of pure thought. He says (Werke, v. pp. 408–409): “Courageously men betake themselves to the chase after felicity, heartily appropriating and fondly devoting themselves to the first best object that pleases them and that promises to repay their efforts. But as soon as they withdraw into themselves and ask themselves, ‘Am I now happy?’ the reply comes distinctly from the depth of their soul, ‘Oh, no; thou art still just as empty and destitute as before!’ Convinced that this is a true deliverance, they imagine that they have failed only in the choice of their object, and throw themselves upon another. This, too, will just as little content them as the first; no object beneath the sun and moon will satisfy them. … Thus they pine and fret their life through; in every situation in which they find themselves, thinking if it were only different how much better their lot would be, and yet, after it has changed, finding themselves no better off than before; at every spot at which they stand, supposing if they could only reach yon height their uneasiness would cease, yet finding again, even on the height, their old woe. … Perhaps they even resign the hope of satisfaction in this earthly life, but accept in compensation a certain traditional doctrine concerning a blessedness beyond the grave. In what a deplorable illusion are they caught! Quite certainly, indeed, lies blessedness also beyond the grave for him for whom it has already begun on this side; through the mere interment, however, one does not enter into blessedness; and they will in the future life, and in the infinite series of all future lives, just as vainly seek blessedness as they have sought it in the present life, if they seek it in anything else than in that which already encircles them so closely here that it can never be brought nearer to them in endless time, in the Eternal.—Thus, then, errs the poor offspring of eternity, thrust out of his paternal abode, always surrounded by his celestial heritage, which his timid hand fears only to touch, inconstant, and roaming in the waste, endeavouring in vain to settle; fortunately, through the speedy ruin of all his habitations, reminded that he will nowhere find rest but in his father’s house.”

  Schelling says (Werke, i. 7, p. 399): “Hence the veil of sadness that is spread over all Nature, the deep indestructible melancholy of all life.” He has, moreover (Werke, i. 10, pp. 266–268), a very beautiful passage which should be read in its entirety; here I can only quote a few fragments: “Certainly it is a painful way the Being which lives in Nature traverses in his passage through it; to that the line of sorrow, traced on the countenance of all Nature, on the face of the animal world testifies. … But this misfortune of existence is hereby annulled that it is accepted and felt as non-existence, in that man seeks to bear up in the greatest possible freedom from it. … Who will trouble himself about the common and ordinary mischances of a transitory life that has apprehended the pain of universal existence and the great fate of the whole?” “Anguish is the fundamental feeling of every living creature” (i. 8, 322). “Pain is something universal and necessary in all life. … All pain only comes from being” (i. 8, 335). “The unrest of unceasing willing and desiring, by which every creature is goaded, is in itself unblessedness” (ii. 1, 473; comp. also i. 8, 235–236; ii. 1, 556, 557, 560).

  I shall content myself with these citations; a few more will be found in Schopenhauer’s “World as Will and Idea,” ii. chap. 46.

  But what do such subjective expressions of opinion without annexed reasons prove? Must we not rather mistrust them because they proceed from eminent intelligences, affected by that melancholy sadness which is the inheritance of almost all genius, because they do not feel at home in the world of their inferiors? (Comp. Aristotle, Prob. 30, 1.) Certainly the worth of the world must be measured by its own standard, not by that of the genius. Let us look, therefore, further.

  Imagine some one who is no genius, but a man with the best general culture of his time, endowed with all the other good things of an enviable lot, in the most vigorous years of manhood, who is fully conscious of the advantage which he enjoys over the lower orders in the uncivilised nations and over his fellows of ruder ages, and who by no means envies those above him, who are tormented by all sorts of discomforts spared to himself—a man who is neither exhausted and rendered blasé by immoderate pleasure, nor has ever been crushed by exceptional strokes of fate.

  Let us imagine Death to draw nigh this man and say, Thy life-period is run out, and at this hour thou art on the brink of annihilation; but it depends on thy present voluntary decision, once again, precisely in the same way, to go through thy now closed life with complete oblivion of all that has passed. Now choose!”

  I question whether the man would prefer the repetition of the past performance to non-existence, if his mind be free from fear, and calm, and if he has not altogether lived so thoughtlessly, without all self-reflection, that, in his inability to offer a summary criticism of the experiences of his life, he does but give expression in his answer merely to the instinct of the desire of living at all cost, or allows his judgment to be thereby too much biassed. How much more, however, now must this man prefer non-being to a re-entrance into life, which offers him not the favourable conditions his past life offered, but, on the contrary, leaves it perfectly to chance into what new life-conditions he enters, which thus offers him, with a possibility bordering on certainty, worse conditions than those which he first disdained!

  In the situation of this man, however, the Unconscious would find itself at every moment of a new birth, if it really possessed an option.

  But in this example, likewise, the reproach attached to the opinions of genius is not to be avoided, that we have interrogated an intelligence far above the average, but that, as each single phenomenon must be judged by its own standard, the world as a whole can only be judged with approximate correctness if the judgment is passed according to the average standard of all the several phenomena. The above example, however, if it is correct in itself, proves that this stage of intelligence already condemns the phenomenon by which it is supported, of which it is indisputably the sole competent tribunal, whilst, on the contrary, the error only consists in this, that it regards itself as competent to condemn also what is below it, whilst this likewise must be measured by its own standard.

  This error is, however, not to be wondered at, for it also quite universally occurs where the intelligence does not stand so high as to condemn the appearance by which it is supported. Let any one, e.g., ask a woodcutter, or a Hottentot, or an orang-outang whether he would prefer annihilation or new birth in a rhinoceros or a louse. They would probably all prefer annihilation, but, nevertheless, prefer the repetition of their own life to annihila
tion, precisely as the rhinoceros and the louse would prefer a repetition of their life to annihilation.

  This error arises, however, from this, that the interrogated at the moment of decision projects himself with his present intelligence into the life of the lower phase, when he of course must find it unendurable, and forgets that then at the lower stage also only the intelligence of this lower stage would be at his command for judging.

  There remains, then, in fact, nothing for it but to judge every phenomenal stage of the Unconscious by its own standard, and then to draw from all these special judgments the algebraic sum, which then at the same time represents a real unconscious unity, namely, the totality of all the subjective determinations of feeling posited in the All-one Being. Every judgment from an alien standpoint yields unavailable results; for every being is just as happy as it feels itself to be, not as I should feel in its place with my intelligence, since this is an unreal supposition.

  Pain and pleasure are only so far as they are felt; they have thus no reality at all except in the sentient subject; consequently an objective reality does not directly appertain to them, but only in virtue of the objective reality of the subject in which they exist, i.e., their reality is immediately a subjective one, and only so far as they have a subjective reality have they indirectly also an objective one. It follows from this that there is no other direct measure of the reality of sensation than the subjective, and accordingly that an illusion or untruth of feeling as such is impossible.

  But undoubtedly feeling may be untrue so far as the ideas are untrue by which it is aroused, but then the delusion indeed always lies in the idea of the object, but the feeling itself, no matter whether it rests on a real basis or on an illusion, is always equally true and equally entitled to be taken account of in the sum total.

  If, now, the difference in the sentence which the intelligence of the louse would pass on its life and that which my intelligence passes on my life depends solely on this, that the louse is entangled in illusions which I do not share, and that these illusions afford it an excess of felt, thus real felicity, which causes it to prefer its life to non-existence, manifestly the louse would be right and I wrong. The decision, however, is not so simple; for beside this source of error on my side there remain further sources of error in the answer of the louse, which corrupt its judgment, as the former mine—to wit, although undoubtedly the life-value of every being can only be considered according to its own subjective standard—and here illusion is as good as truth—yet it is by no means asserted that every being draws the correct algebraic sum from all the affections of its life, or, in other words, that its collective judgment on its own life is a correct one in respect of its subjective experience. Quite apart from the degree of intelligence necessary for the pronunciation of such a summary judgment, there remains, in the first place, the possibility of errors of memory and combination; and secondly, of a bias of the judgment by the will and unconscious feeling.

  If we may assume that the former errors might be got rid of in the judgment of a large number of individuals, the latter source of error, on the contrary, weighs so much the heavier. Whoever knows how powerful is the unconscious bias of thought and judgment by the will, by instincts and feelings, will immediately allow the great importance of the errors thereby rendered possible. Let any one reflect how easily unpleasant impressions are blotted out of the mind and how pleasant ones remain, so that even an event or adventure disagreeable enough in reality appears in memory in the most charming light (juvat meminisse malorum); in consequence of this the recapitulating memory must attain to a far more favourable summing up of the pleasure-content of personal life than a review of the pleasure and pain actually felt in the course of life undistorted by the glasses of memory would yield. What memory is unable to accomplish in the way of hushing up really felt pain, the instinct of hope most certainly accomplishes for future feeling (comp. below No. 12), and the balance of the past will be involuntarily falsified by all younger persons by the introduction of the idea of a future which is purged by hope of the main causes of past pain without the causes of pain hereafter to be added being taken into account. Thus it is not the true life as it actually was and will be, but as it is exhibited to the uncritical eye in the embellishing mirror of memory and in the deceptive roseate hue of hope that is used for drawing the balance between the sum of pleasure and the sum of pain; and hence it is no wonder if a result appears to be yielded which little enough agrees with reality.

  Let one consider, further, that the foolish vanity of man goes so far as to prefer to seem rather than to be not merely well but also happy, so that every one carefully hides where the shoe pinches, and tries to make a show of opulence, contentment, and happiness which he does not at all possess. This source of error falsifies the sentence that one passes on others according to what they express and reveal of the balance of pleasure and pain of their life, just as the two just-named sources of error the judgment on their own part. If one, however, judges according to what other people are wont to declare concerning the sum of happiness of their whole life, it is clear that we have here to deal with the product of the two mentioned errors. One already sees from this with what caution we must accept the judgment of mankind on their own felicity.

  Lastly, when we consider, as is a priori to be expected, that the same unconscious will which has created beings with these instincts and passions will also through these instincts and passions influence conscious thinking in the direction of the same life-impulse, we should rather only wonder how the instinctive love of life should come to be able in consciousness to condemn this same life; for the same Unconscious which wills life, and, moreover, for its quite special ends wills just this life in spite of its wretchedness, will certainly not omit to fit out the creatures of life with just as many illusions as they need, in order not merely to make life supportable, but also to leave over enough love of life, elasticity, and freshness for the life-tasks to be accomplished by them and claiming all their energy, and thus to cozen them concerning the misery of their existence.

  In this sense Jean Paul well says: “We do not love life because it is beautiful, but because we must love it; and hence it happens that we often draw the inverted conclusion: since we love life, it must be beautiful.” What is here called love to life is nothing else but the instinctive impulse of self-preservation, the conditio sine qua non of individuation, the negative expression of which is the avoidance and warding off of disturbances, and in the highest degree the fear of death, of which mention has been made at the beginning of Sect. B. Chap. i. Death in itself is no evil at all, for the pain connected with it falls indeed still into life, and would not be more feared than the same pain in sickness, if the cessation of individual existence were not bound up with it, which is not felt, thus cannot be any evil at all. As little then as the fear of death can be understood otherwise than from the blind instinct of self-preservation, so little the love of life. As is the case in general with the fear of death and the love of life, so in particular in many phases of life, which instinctive impulse spurs us to retain and eagerly to experience, in consequence of which our judgment on the algebraic sum of the enjoyments and pains special to this phase is corrupted and the impression of the experience just made glossed over by the new deceitful hope. This is the case with all the properly impelling passions, hunger, love, honour, avarice, &c.

  It must now be inquired here, in respect of the different impulses and aims of life, how far instinct and passion themselves cause a corruption of the judgment with regard to the total enjoyment or pain endured through the particular aim; but this would be a very difficult problem, because the assent of every reader would depend on this, that in judging of his previous judgment he perfectly emancipate himself in each of these directions from the corrupting influence of impulse and passion, which is hardly to be expected; for a conscientious life-long self-observation is scarcely able to effect that. Apart from the small prospect of success which this effort by its
very nature would offer, there would be also an external inconvenience connected with it. This consideration, namely, would by no means dispense us from the task of afterwards subjecting all those feelings to a criticism which, in spite of their complete reality, rest on illusions, and which therefore are destroyed along with the destruction of these illusions with advancing conscious intelligence.

  This inquiry we cannot be spared, because all progress has in view the increase of conscious intelligence.

  The lower animals and plants, since the commencement of organic life, have been more and more displaced by higher ones—the higher animals by man,—and humanity will in time attain, on the average, a pitch of intelligence and cosmic intuition which at present only a cultured few have reached.

  The question how far the feelings rest on illusions is thus of the highest importance for the decision of our problem, since what will become of the world, whither it is tending, is manifestly of far greater importance for the estimation of its value than the provisional stage of development at which it may accidentally happen to be.

  We should thus, then, have to consider the same impulses and phases of life once more under this second point of view, and it is evident that here many repetitions must occur, partly not to disturb the understanding, partly because in the concrete case the two points of view are so intimately connected that it often appears hardly possible strictly to separate them. I therefore prefer to pursue the consideration from both points of view simultaneously.

  In many cases where the reader might be disinclined to admit that the ordinary theoretical assumption of a preponderating enjoyment rests on an error, i.e., on a corruption of the judgment by impulse or by other sources of error, he would hardly refuse to allow that the preponderating enjoyment itself supposed by him, if it really exists, still depends on an illusion, and is accordingly rendered questionable by the thorough destruction of the illusion. Both, however, come, for the object of our inquiry, almost to the same thing; for if it is true that with the progressive intelligence of the world the illusions of existence also must be more and more undermined, until finally all is recognised as “vanity of vanities,” the condition of the world would become ever more unhappy the more it approaches the goal of its evolution, whence we should conclude that it would have been more rational to prevent the development of the world the earlier the better, best of all to suppress its arising at the moment of its origin.