Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  Contempt of the world and life is the easiest path to self-denial; only by this path has a morality of self-denial, like the Christian and Buddhist, been historically possible. In these fruits which it bears for facilitating the infinitely difficult self-renunciation lies the immense and hardly to be sufficiently estimated ethical value of Pessimism.

  But lastly, had Stirner approached the direct philosophical investigation of the Idea of the Ego, he would have seen that this idea is just as unsubstantial and brain-created a phantom (cp. “Das Ding an Sich,” sect. iii., “Das transcendentale Subject”), as, for instance, the Idea of honour or of right, and that the only being which answers to the idea of the inner cause of my activity is something non-individual, the Only Unconscious, which therefore answers just as well to Peter’s idea of his ego as Paul’s idea of his ego. On this deepest of all bases rests only the esoteric ethics of Buddhism, not the Christian ethics. If one has firmly and thoughtfully made this cognition his own, that one and the same Being feels my and thy pain, my and thy pleasure, only accidentally through the intervention of different brains, then is the exclusive egoism radically broken, that is only shaken, though deeply shaken, by contempt of the world and of life; then is the standpoint of Stirner finally overcome, to which one must at some time have entirely given adhesion in order to feel the greatness of the advance; then first is Egoism sublated as a moment in the consciousness of forming a link in the world-process, in which it finds its necessary and relatively, i.e., to a certain degree, authorised place.

  There occurs, namely at the end of each of the preceding stages of the illusion, and before the discovery of the next, the voluntary surrender of individual existence—suicide, as a necessary consequence. Both the life-weary heathen, and the Christian, despairing at once of the world and his faith, must in consistency do away with themselves; or if, like Schopenhauer, they believe themselves unable to attain by this means the end of the abolition of individual existence, they must at any rate divert their will from life to quietism and continence, or even asceticism. It is the height of self-deception to see in this saving of the dear Ego from the discomfort of existence anything else than the grossest selfism, than a highly refined Epicureanism, that has only taken a direction contrary to instinct through a view of life opposed to instinct In all Quietism, whether with brutish inertness it is content merely to eat and drink, or loses itself in idyllic love of Nature, or in reverie natural or artificially induced (by narcotics) passively revels in the images of a luxuriant fancy, or surrounded by the refinements of a luxurious life, languidly drives away ennui with the choicest morsels of the arts and sciences—in all this Quietism the Epicurean trait is unmistakable, the inordinate desire to pass life in the manner most agreeable to the individual constitution, with a minimum of effort and displeasure, unconcerned about the thereby neglected duties to fellow-men and society. But even asceticism, which is apparently the counterpart of Egoism, is also always egoistic, even when it does not, like the Christian, hope for reward in an individual immortality, but merely hopes, by the temporary assumption of a certain pain, to attain the shortening of the evil of life and individual deliverance from all continuation of life after death (new birth, &c.) In the suicide and in the ascetic the self-denial is as little deserving of admiration as in the sick person who, to escape the prospect of a perpetual toothache, reasonably prefers the painful drawing of the tooth. In both cases there is only well-calculated egoism without any ethical value; rather an egoism that in all such situations of life is immoral, save when the possibility of fulfilling one’s duties to one’s relatives and society is entirely cut off.

  It is otherwise when interest for the development of the whole takes deep root in the heart, and the individual feels himself a member of the whole—a member filling a more or less valuable but never quite useless place in the general evolution. Then will it be requisite, for the sake of filling this place, to devote oneself with genuine joy in self-sacrifice to the life which, from the point of view of the Ego, was rejected not only as useless good, but as sure torment, because the suicide of a still capable individual not only saves the whole no pain, but even increases its torment, lengthening it out by the necessity, needing considerable time, of procuring a substitute for the amputated limb. Then there further results the obvious demand to fill up the life preserved out of self-denial for the sake of the whole in a manner subserving no longer individual comfort, but the welfare of the whole, which is not to be accomplished by passive receptivity, not by indolent repose and the timid avoidance of contact with the struggle of existence, but by active production, by untiring action, by self-denying plunging into the vortex of life, and participation in the common economic and mental work of civilisation. That alone would render Quietism a deadly sin, that its more general extension would jeopardise and convert in a short time into continually increasing retrogression all the achievements of civilisation, which mankind has conquered with such difficulty in the thousands of years. History teaches however, how boundless is the wretchedness of a people retrograding in civilisation, nay, how hardly even the mere pause of civilisation, impeded progress, presses upon a people. For as the life of the individual organism is a sum of continual acts of the vis medicatrix, so, too, is the life of the political and social organism only possible as a continual strain of all available force for the warding off of the disturbing and injurious influences constantly lying on the watch on all sides for points of attack.

  Thus, then, the instinct of egoism, or instinct of individual life, is to a certain extent reinstated by consciousness, but no longer as absolute or sovereign power, but with the extent resulting from its aim for the whole, and limited by the recognition and respect for the striving of other individuals likewise necessary for the process.—As Egoism in general, so also those instincts are rehabilitated by consciousness which, like compassion, sentiment of equity, have a value for the whole, or, as love and honour, a value for the future; they are now voluntarily adopted with the consciousness of personal sacrifice for the sake of the whole and of progress. This personal sacrifice, made for life by the very devotion to it, finds then its reward in the hope of the future of the evolution, of the growing improvement of the circumstances of life, and the felicity beckoning the creative Being of the world, whose life is also mine.

  This hope of a future positive happiness of humanity, and the co-operation for its sake in the process of the whole, forms the third stage of the illusion, whose examination is now our task. I trust and believe that most of those readers who have thus far followed the discussion with approval will not part company with me at this point. They can and must not, if they would not cease to be the children of their age, which is itself at the beginning of the third stage of the illusion, and hopefully hails and eagerly rushes to fulfil the promises of the golden future. Providence takes care that the anticipations of the silent thinker do not disarrange the course of history by prematurely gaining too many adherents. The only apparently related contemporary political and social pessimism of certain governments in the condition of youthful ferment or decay is a product of passing constellations destined to be overcome; it will and must pass over into political and social optimism, and has nothing to do with my metaphysical pessimism, which does not exclude, but includes, the political, social, or other optimism.—

  When we were occupied with the criticism of the first stage of the illusion, it was not possible to avoid occasional glimpses into the future shaping of the world; nay, we may go so far as to assert that the attentive reader must have already found in that criticism of the first stage the criticism of the third.

  To save repetition, I therefore beg that the resumé (No. 13) of the critique of the first stage may be re-read in this sense, and the reader will be convinced of the truth of my assertion that those results contain far more than was then concluded from them for the refutation of the first stage of the illusion. Thus, e.g., the proof of the proposition that the pain of non-satisfaction is always
and fully felt, but the pleasure of satisfaction only under favourable circumstances, and, with considerable deductions, holds good not merely for the present, but quite universally.

  However great the progress of mankind, it will never get rid of, or even only diminish, the greatest of sufferings—sickness, age, dependence on the will and power of others, want, and discontent. However many the remedies found against diseases, diseases, especially the tormenting slighter chronic ills, always increase in quicker progression than medical science. Cheerful youth will always form only a fraction of mankind, and the other part be composed of morose age. The hunger due to the indefinite increase of the human race will always be the portion of a large stratum of the population, which has more hunger than it can satisfy, which, by reason of deficient nutriment, shows a long bill of mortality; in short, which continually succumbs to a considerable percentage in the bitter struggle with want (comp. ii. 23, iii. 28–30). The most contented peoples are the rude peoples living in a state of nature, and the uneducated classes of civilised peoples; with the increasing cultivation of the people grows, as experience shows, its discontent.

  That stratum of the population living on the borders of hunger felt formerly, and in part now feels, its misery only as long as the stomach gnawed; but the farther the world gets the more threatening becomes the spectre of the poverty of the masses, the more fearful does the whole consciousness of their wretchedness take possession of those wretched ones. The social question of the present day rests in the last resort upon a heightened consciousness of the working classes of the wretchedness of their situation, whilst actually this situation is truly golden in comparison with that of two hundred years ago, when nothing was known of a social question.

  Immorality, if one measures by the standard of the disposition, has not grown less since the establishment of a primitive human society to the present day, only the form in which the criminal character expresses itself is changed. Apart from variations of the ethical character of nations on the large scale, everywhere we see the same proportion of egoism and charity, and when the atrocities and barbarities of former times are pointed to, we should also not forget to take into account, on the one hand, the probity and honesty, the clear feeling of equity, and the reverence for consecrated custom of ancient peoples living in a state of nature, and, on the other, the growing deceit, falsehood, cunning, chicane, non-regardance of property and of the well-founded, but no longer understood, instinctive morality accompanying civilisation. (Op. the descriptions and reflections of Wallace on the almost paradisaical purity of manners and singleness of heart of the Malays at the close of his book of travels, “The Malay Archipelago.”) Theft, fraud, and forgery increase, despite the penalties annexed to them, more rapidly than the gross and serious crimes (such as robbery, murder, rape, &c.) decrease; the basest self-interest shamelessly rends asunder the most sacred bonds of the family and friendship wherever it comes into collision with them, and only the infallible execution of the punishments assigned by the state and society prevents the brutal cruelty of ruder times, which immediately breaks forth again and reveals human bestiality in all its hideousness, when the bonds of law and of order are loosened or rent, as in the Polish Revolution, the last year of the American Civil War, or the horrors of the Paris Commune in the spring of 1871. No; thus far the wickedness and the all-devouring selfishness of man has not lessened; it is only artificially dammed in by the dikes of the law and of civil society; knows, however, in place of the open overflow how to find a thousand secret paths by which it percolates the dams. The degree of the immoral disposition has remained the same, but it has discarded the cloven foot and walks about in conventional costume; the thing and its consequences remain the same, the form alone becomes more elegant.

  The time is at hand when theft and illegal fraud will be despised as vulgar and clumsy by the more clever rogue, who knows how to keep his attacks on his neighbour’s property within the letter of the law. I would, however, rather have run the occasional risk of being slain among the ancient Germans than in the modern civilised state to have to regard every man as a rogue and rascal until I have undeniable proof of his honesty. We may conclude by analogy that however refined the form in which immorality may hereafter appear, it will still remain equally immoral and equally a source of pain to those suffering the wrong. For although it may justly be objected that in the primitive and patriarchal forms of society morality rests on unconscious custom, and has declined with this foundation without, owing to the inadequateness of all religious and philosophical individual ethics, having found a substitute, but which the future will find in a social ethic elevating morality step by step through the replacement of unconscious moral tact by consciousness; if, further, one may also point to this, that the eruditio or “decrudescence” of feeling must necessarily afford, and, in part, has already afforded, in benevolent institutions, systems of poor-relief, care for the sick, the mentally imbecile, blind, deaf and dumb, criminals, societies for the protection of animals, &c., a broader field to the same extent of ethical foundation, yet such a real increase of the fund of morality, in part ameliorating the character through repeated practice, in part directly applying its lever to ethical feeling, is completely balanced by the sharpened sensibility for wrongs endured, although in the mildest and most refined form. If rude men cleave one another’s skulls with the utmost nonchalance, yet the sensitive and cultured feel very acutely even the slightest want of consideration, and how much more the fine edge of subtle malice! Accordingly, as regards the question concerning the total suffering called forth by immorality, growing morality and increasing sensibility to injuries are at least balanced; nay, with increasing culture the moral standard even rises, which now brands the same action as much more immoral than formerly, and with reference to this necessary raising of the standard, one may even say that the sum of immoral action increases, because the augmentation of the moral fund does not keep pace with the raising of the standard for the ethical judgment, but remains behind the latter. But even supposing morality actually to increase to an ideal state, yet it could scarcely reach the threshold of feeling, because the exclusion of all wrong is still not happiness, and positive morality only a palliative of helpless human want (cp. p. 60, and vol. ii. 365). The latter finds expression in the saying, that the endeavours of the future must aim at rendering superfluous, and obviating by a firm organisation of the most varied forms of social solidarity, private beneficence and voluntary works of charity.——

  One phase of life, which, with a certain mental constitution, may doubtless afford positive happiness, piety, is, of course, at our third stage of the illusion a surmounted standpoint, at least its principal arteries, the immortality-dogma and prayer are ligatured. Were it not so, the third stage of the illusion would not be pure, but mixed with the second, which indeed may in reality be very common, but in our rational survey, where the points of view must be kept well apart, must not be assumed. But at all events, one will not be able to deny that with progressive civilisation the average decrease of the religious illusion more and more diminishes its importance of the same for our estimation, and the time is not far off when an educated person will no longer be capable of the enjoyment of religious edification in the previous sense, but at the most will be able to fashion a sort of private religious cultus out of the consciousness of the mystical connection with the All-One.

  The two other factors, to which we had accorded a positive excess of pleasure, Science and Art, will also alter their position in the future of the world. The more we look back, the more is scientific progress the work of a few eminent men of genius, whom the Unconscious creates as its organ, to accomplish what is not to be attained with the forces of the average conscious human understanding. The more we approach the present day, the more numerous become the scientific workers, the more co-operative their work. Whilst the geniuses of former times resembled magicians who cause an edifice to spring up out of nothing, the spiritual works of modern times may b
e compared to the construction of an industrious body of builders, in which each adds his stone to the great building, a larger or smaller, according to his strength. The method of the future will become more exclusively inductive, and the fundamental character of scientific work be not depth but breadth. Thus there will be ever less need of the men of genius, and therefore ever less wrought by the Unconscious. As society is levelled by the civilian’s black coat, so also in spiritual reference we are steering more and more towards a level of respectable mediocrity. It follows from this that the pleasure in scientific production is becoming ever less, and the world is limited more and more to the receptive enjoyment of science. This, however, is only considerable where the wrestling and struggling after truth has been personally experienced, not, however, where truth is presented to one like a baked pasty. Then often the pleasure of knowing hardly balances the effort of acquiring, and the practical utility of the acquisition or ambition must yield the proper motives of learning.

  A similar state of things takes place in Art, although this has a more favourable outlook than Science. In it, too, the productive men of genius will become ever rarer the more humanity leaves behind it the spontaneous life of childhood and the transcendent ideals of its enthusiastic youth, and is careful for the comfortable furnishing of its earthly home, the more in manhood the social, economical, and practical scientific interests gain the upper hand. Art is then no longer what it was to the youth, the sublime beatific goddess; it is only a distraction enjoyed with half-attention as a refreshment from the toils of the day, an opiate for ennui, or an amusement after the seriousness of business. Hence an ever-extending dilettante superficiality, and a neglect of all earnest tendencies of art to be enjoyed only with strenuous application. The artistic production of the manhood of humanity estranged from the ideal naturally reflects the same facile dilettante superficiality, skilfully mastering the form and living on the treasures of the past, and no longer produces men of genius, because they are no longer needs of the time, because that would be to throw pearls before swine, or even because the age has advanced beyond the stage to which men of genius belonged to one more important. To protect myself from misunderstanding, I expressly observe that I do not by this characteristic intend to denote the present time, but a future, on whose threshold our century stands, and of which the present offers only a weak foretaste. Art will be on the whole to humanity in its manhood somewhat what the Berlin farce is to the Berlin stock-jobber of an evening. This view is certainly only to be proved by the analogy of the development of humanity with the life-periods of the individual, and by the confirmation which this analogy finds in the previous course of development and the already tolerably distinctly perceptible aims of the next period.—