The Greeks and Romans

This world is so arranged as to be able to maintain itself with great difficulty; but if it were a little worse, it could no longer maintain itself.

Consequently a worse world, since it could not continue to exist, is absolutely impossible: thus this world itself is the worst of all possible worlds. For not only if the planets were to run their heads together, but even if any one of the actually appearing perturbations of their course, instead of being gradu- ally balanced by others, continued to increase, the world would soon reach its end. Astronomers know upon what accidental circumstances—principally the irrational relation to each other of the periods of revolution—this depends, and have carefully calculated that it will always go on well; consequently the world also can continue and go on. We will hope that, although Newton was of an opposite opinion, they have not miscalculated, and consequently that the mechanical perpetual motion realised in such a planetary system will not also, like the rest, ultimately come to a standstill.

Again, under the firm crust of the planet dwell the powerful forces of nature which, as soon as some accident affords them free play, must necessarily destroy that crust, with everything living upon it, as has already taken place at least three times upon our planet, and will probably take place oftener still. The earthquake of Lisbon, the earthquake of Haiti, the destruction of Pompeii, are only small, playful hints of what is possible. A small alteration of the atmosphere, which cannot even be chemically proved, causes cholera, yellow fever, black death, &c., which carry off millions of men; a somewhat greater alteration would extinguish all life. A very moderate increase of heat would dry up all the rivers and springs. The brutes have received just barely so much in the way of organs and powers as enables them to procure with the greatest exertion sustenance for their own lives and food for their offspring; therefore if a brute loses a limb, or even the full use of one, it must generally perish.

Even of the human race, powerful as are the weapons it possesses in understanding and reason, nine-tenths live in constant conflict with want, always balancing themselves with difficulty and effort upon the brink of destruction. Thus throughout, as for the continuance of the whole, so also for that of each individual being the conditions are barely and scantily given, but nothing over. The individual life is a ceaseless battle for existence itself; while at every step destruction threatens it. Just because this threat is so often fulfilled provision had to be made, by means of the enormous excess of the germs, that the destruction of the individuals should not involve that of the species, for which alone nature really cares. The world is therefore as bad as it possibly can be if it is to continue to be at all. Q. E. D. The fossils of the entirely different kinds of animal species which formerly inhabited the planet afford us, as a proof of our calculation, the records of worlds the continuance of which was no longer possible, and which consequently were somewhat worse than[397] the worst of possible worlds.

Optimism is at bottom the unmerited self-praise of the real originator of the world, the will to live, which views itself complacently in its works; and accordingly it is not only a false, but also a pernicious doctrine. For it presents life to us as a desirable condition, and the happiness of man as the end of it. Starting from this, every one then believes that he has the most just claim to happiness and pleasure; and if, as is wont to happen, these do not fall to his lot, then he believes that he is wronged, nay, that he loses the end of his existence; while it is far more correct to regard work, privation, misery, and suffering, crowned by death, as the end of our life (as Brahmanism and Buddhism, and also genuine Christianity do); for it is these which lead to the denial of the will to live. In the New Testament the world is represented as a valley of tears, life as a process of purifying or refining, and the symbol of Christianity is an instrument of torture. Therefore, when Leibnitz, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and Pope brought forward optimism, the general offence which it gave depended principally upon the fact that optimism is irreconcilable with Christianity; as Voltaire states and explains in the preface to his excellent poem, “Le désastre de Lisbonne,” which is also expressly directed against optimism. This great man, whom I so gladly praise, in opposition to the abuse of venal German ink-slingers, is placed decidedly higher than Rousseau by the insight to which he attained in three respects, and which prove the greater depth of his thinking: (1) the recognition of the preponderating magnitude of the evil and misery of existence with which he is deeply penetrated; (2) that of the strict necessity of the acts of will; (3) that of the truth of Locke’s principle, that what thinks may also be material: while Rousseau opposes all this with declamations in his “Profession de foi du vicaire Savoyard,” a superficial Protestant pastor’s philosophy; as he also in the same spirit attacks the beautiful poem of Voltaire [398] which has just been referred to with ill-founded, shallow, and logically false reasoning, in the interests of optimism, in his long letter to Voltaire of 18th August 1756, which is devoted simply to this purpose. Indeed, the fundamental characteristic and the ¿¡…ƒøΩ »μ≈¥ø¬ of Rousseau’s whole philosophy is this, that in the place of the Christian doctrine of original sin, and the original depravity of the human race, he puts an original goodness and unlimited perfectibility of it, which has only been led astray by civilisation and its consequences, and then founds upon this his optimism and humanism. As in “Candide” Voltaire wages war in his facetious manner against optimism, Byron has also done so in his serious and tragic style, in his immortal masterpiece, “Cain,” on account of which he also has been honoured with the invectives of the obscurantist, Friedrich Schlegel. If now, in conclusion, to confirm my view, I were to give what has been said by great men of all ages in this anti-optimistic spirit, there would be no end to the quotations, for almost every one of them has expressed in strong language his knowledge of the misery of this world.

Thus, not to confirm, but merely to embellish this chapter, a few quotations of this kind may be given at the end of it. First of all, let me mention here that the Greeks, far as they were from the Christian and lofty Asiatic conception of the world, and although they decidedly stood at the point of view of the as- sertion of the will, were yet deeply affected by the wretchedness of existence. This is shown even by the invention of tragedy, which belongs to them. Another proof of it is afforded us by the custom of the Thracians, which is first mentioned by Herodotus, though often referred to afterwards—the custom of welcoming the new-born child with lamentations, and recounting all the evils which now lie before it; and, on the other hand, burying the dead with mirth and jesting, because they are no longer exposed to so many and great sufferings. In a beautiful poem preserved for us[399] by Plutarch (De audiend. poët. in fine) this runs thus:— “§øΩ ∆≈Ωƒ± ∏¡∑ΩμπΩ, μπ¬ A√Ω μ¡«μƒ±π ∫±∫± §øΩ ¥Ω±≈ ∏±ΩøΩƒ± ∫±π ¿øΩ…Ω ¿μ¿±≈ºμΩøΩ ß±π¡øΩƒ±¬ μ≈∆∑ºø≈Ωƒ±¬ μ∫¿μº¿μπΩ ¥øº…Ω.” (Lugere genitum, tanta qui intrarit mala: At morte si quis finiisset miserias, Hunc laude amicos atque lætitia exsequi.) It is not to be attributed to historical relationship, but to the moral identity of the matter, that the Mexicans welcomed the new-born child with the words, “My child, thou art born to en- dure; therefore endure, suffer, and keep silence.” And, following the same feeling, Swift (as Walter Scott relates in his Life of Swift) early adopted the custom of keeping his birthday not as a time of joy but of sadness, and of reading on that day the passage of the Bible in which Job laments and curses the day on which it was said in the house of his father a man-child is born. Well known and too long for quotation is the passage in the “Apology of Socrates,” in which Plato makes this wisest of mortals say that death, even if it deprives us of consciousness for ever, would be a wonderful gain, for a deep, dreamless sleep every day is to be preferred even to the happiest life. A saying of Heraclitus runs: “§Û ø≈Ω ≤πÛ øΩøº± ºμΩ ≤πø¬, μ¡≥øΩ ¥μ ∏±Ω±ƒø¬.” (Vitæ nomen quidem est vita, opus autem mors. Etymologicum magnum, voce íπø¬; also Eustath. ad Iliad., i. p. 31.)

The beautiful lines of the “Theogony” are famous:—

Sophocles, in “Œdipus Colonus” (1225), has the following abbreviation of the same:

Euripides says:

And Homer already said:—

Even Pliny says: “Quapropter hoc primum quisque in remediis animi sui habeat, ex omnibus bonis, quæ homini natura tribuit, nullum melius esse tempestiva morte” (Hist. Nat. 28, 2). Shakspeare puts the words in the mouth of the old king Henry IV.:— “O heaven! that one might read the book of fate, And see the revolution of the times, … how chances mock, And changes fill the cup of alteration With divers liquors! O, if this were seen, The happiest youth,—viewing his progress through, What perils past, what crosses to ensue,— Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.”

Finally, Byron:— “Count o’er the joys thine hours have seen, Count o’er thy days from anguish free, And know, whatever thou hast been, ‘Tis something better not to be.”

Baltazar Gracian also brings the misery of our existence before our eyes in the darkest colours in the “Criticon,” Parte i., Crisi 5, just at the beginning, and Crisi 7 at the end, where he explicitly represents life as a tragic farce.

Yet no one has so thoroughly and exhaustively handled this subject as, in our own day, Leopardi. He is entirely filled and penetrated by it: his theme is everywhere the mockery and wretchedness of this existence; he presents it upon every page of his works, yet in such a multiplicity of forms and applications, with such wealth of imagery that he never wearies us, but, on the contrary, is throughout entertaining and exciting.