The Philosophy of Despair | Page 5

human nature in detail we find more of animal than of
angel, and the "veracity of thought and action," which is the choicest
gift of Science, is lost in the happy-go-lucky movement of the human

mob. "To see things as they really are" is the purpose of the philosophy
of Pessimism in the hands of its worthiest exponents. But we know
what is, and that alone, even were such knowledge possible, is not to
know the truth. The higher wisdom seeks to find the forces at work to
produce that which now is. The present time is the meeting time of
forces; the present fact their temporary product. To the philosophy of
Evolution, "every meanest day is the conflux of two eternities." Each
meanest fact is the product of the world-forces that lie behind it; each
meanest man the resultant of the vast powers, alive in human nature,
struggling since life began. And these forces, omnipotent and eternal,
will never cease their work.
To the philosophy of Pessimism, the child is a mere human larva, weak,
perverse, disagreeable, the heir of mortality, with all manner of "defects
of doubt and taints of blood," gathered in the long experience of its
wretched parentage.
In the more hopeful view of Evolution the child exists for its
possibilities. The huge forces within have thrown it to the surface of
time. They will push it onward to development, which may not be
much in the individual case, but beyond it all lie the possibilities of its
race. Inherent in it is the power to rise, to form its own environment, to
stand at last superior to the blind forces by which the human will was
made. With this thought is sure to come, in some degree, the certainty
that the heart of the Universe is sound, that though there be so many of
us in the world, each must have his place, and each at last "be somehow
needful to infinity." We can see that each least creature has its need for
being. The present justifies the past. It is the transcendent future which
renders the commonplace present possible.
The "dragons of the prime, That tore each other in the slime,"
lived and fought that we their descendants may realize ourselves in
"lives made beautiful and sweet," through all unlikeness to dragons. It
was necessary that every foot of soil in Europe should be crimsoned by
blood, wantonly shed, to bring the relative peace and tolerance of the
civilization of Europe today. It always "needs that offense must come"
to bring about the better condition in which each particular offense

shall be done away. For the evolution of life is not in straight lines from
lower to higher things, but runs rather in wavering spirals. It is the
resultant of stress and storm. The evil and failure which darken the
present are necessary to the illumination of the future. Time is long.
"God tosses back to man his failures" one by one, and gives him time
and strength to try again.
According to Schopenhauer, we move across the stage of life stung by
appetite and goaded by desire, in pain unceasing, the sole respite from
pain, the instant in which desire is lost in satisfaction. To do away with
desire is to destroy pain, but it also destroys existence. Desire is lost
where the "mouth is stopped with dust," and with death only comes
relief from pain.
Thus the Pessimist tells us that "the only reality in life is pain." But
surely this is not the truth. He who knows no reality save appetite has
never known life at all. The realities in life are love and action; not
desire, but the exercise of our appointed functions.
Action follows sensation. The more we have to do the more accurate
must be our sensations, the greater the hold environment has upon us.
Broader activities demand better knowledge of our surroundings.
Greater sensitiveness to external things means greater capacity for pain,
hence greater suffering, when the natural channels of effort are closed.
Thus arises the hope for nothingness in which many sensitive souls
have indulged. With no surroundings at all, or with environment that
never varies, there could be no sense-perception. To see nothing, to feel
nothing - there could be no demand for action. With no failure of action
there could be no weariness. From the varied environment of earthly
life spring, through adaptation, the varied powers and varied
sensibilities, susceptibilities to joy and pain as well as the rest. The
greater the sensitiveness the greater the capacity for suffering. Hence
the "quenching of desire," the "turning toward Nirvana, the, desire to
escape from the hideous bustle of a world in which we are able to take
no part, is a natural impulse with the soul which