Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

But further, even if the increase of material wealth has brought more comfort to certain classes, there will always remain, says Hartmann, that undermost stratum of population which has more hunger than it can satisfy. Why so? the simple reader may ask. Because of the multiplication of the population, which will always go on up to the point of bare physical existence. But are not economists, including even Malthus himself, agreed that population has a tendency to regulate itself with growing intelligence and moral restraint? No answer. Here again, then, we have not the substance but only the shadow of an argument.

Once more, does not social development bring about moral improvement, the growth of sympathy, and so the mutual increase of individual happiness? No, says Hartmann. On the whole, the same ratio of egoism and benevolence is to be found in all ages and in all countries. Civilisation has no effect on the impulses of wrong-doing, it simply alters the form of their manifestation. Moral depravity has simply laid aside the horse's foot and now stalks about in a dress-coat.' Let us be grateful: here we seem to find something like calculation again. But what kind of calculation? By what possible standard of measurement, it may be asked, does Hartmann prove that the sum of misery growing out of the fierce uncontrolled passions of savage races is equalled by the sum of misery arising from the prudentially restrained but still active immoral tendencies of civilised society? The calculation resolves itself again into the roughest of guesses, which, after reflection, does not even prove to have been a shrewd one. As to the growth of sympathy through the increase of the feeling of solidarity among individuals and even whole peoples, Hartmann hardly condescends to say anything. He does, indeed, tell us that

.

WORTH OF MORAL AND SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. 253

social advance with the growth of social aspiration brings about certain alleviations in the struggle with want through the principle of solidarity; but then he contends that these results are only a diminution of evils, never the attainment of a positive good. As we have seen, Hartmann follows Schopenhauer in regarding sympathy as having to do with suffering only, and does not recognise it under the form of a mutual participation in pleasurable activity.

Finally, it may be asked what Hartmann says respecting the influences of advancing science and art on human happiness. May not these at some distant time, when extensively studied and appreciated, yield a considerable surplus of enjoyment? Theoretical (as distinguished from practical) science is regarded by our author only in its bearing on external good, including moral relations, and is said to effect no appreciable result either in material or moral wellbeing. The enjoyments to be derived from the pursuit of science are not dwelt on here. In treating of the first stage of the illusion, however, Hartmann tells us that with the growing division of labour in science the joy of original discovery will be reduced to a vanishing quantity. This is a bold assertion, since it might appear to an ordinary intelligence that the spread of scientific activity over a much larger field would involve an increase in any enjoyment connected with this activity. It is plain, however, that Hartmann assigns no importance to the pleasures connected with the receptive side of scientific study (which he thinks are more than counterbalanced by the pains of effort), and that the pleasure of science is with him, as with Schopenhauer, the intense delight which is the peculiar prerogative of creative genius. Such an arbitrary limitation does not call for further remark.

With respect to art, our author allows that the receptive enjoyment' (as distinguished from the productive) is a considerable quantity. Yet he does not enter on the inquiry how far this may in the future become an ingredient of the daily life of all classes of society. All that he says with respect to the progress of art is that it is not to be over-estimated, since though our modern art is richer in ideas it is less perfect in form than classic art. This, of course, does not prove much, since it is a question whether the step from Greek to contemporary art is to be taken as a link in the chain of art-progress. What one really wants to know, is not whether a certain people in antiquity reached a development of art which is as high as any modern development, but (a) whether there is a general tendency for art to improve as national life as a whole, and the human race move onward; (b) whether this same social development is not accompanied by a general growth of artistic sense; and (e) whether this twofold æsthetic advance does not involve a very large addition to the sum of human enjoyment. But this is not the first time we have found Hartmann displaying a singular skill in missing the true import of a question.

Enough, perhaps more than enough, has been said to show what Hartmann's process of observation and calculation with respect to the several constituents of human and social progress really amounts to. It has even less pretensions to a rigorous method than the process underlying the investigation of human life in its statical aspect as something coexisting and persisting at the present time. But, in truth, both modes of examination may alike be said to make but the very feeblest pretence to the character of exact numerical computation. Hartmann's method differs,

WORK OF ESTHETIC PROGRESS.

255

indeed, only in form from that rough mode of heaping together a few arbitrarily selected features of life which may be said to mark the boundary of unreasoned and reasoned pessimism. With very much parade of scientific method, it is essentially unscientific, inexact, superficial, and strongly suggestive of a pre-existing unreasoned conviction.1

1 Hartmann's pessimism is dealt with in a not unjustifiable tone of irony in a recently published work, Der Moderne Pessimismus,' by Dr. E. Pfleiderer. Pertinent objections to its reasonings are also to be found, as I have observed, in Johannes Huber's 'Der Pessimismus,' and in Volkelt's 'Das Unbewusste und der Pessimismus.' Finally, Professor Bona Meyer, in a little work entitled 'Weltelend und Weltschmerz,' brings to bear on it what some may think an unnecessary gravity of argument. It has already been remarked that Dühring seeks to meet and to upset the pessimist's view of human life and of the future prospects of the race.

CHAPTER XI.

PLEASURE AND HAPPINESS.

We have now completed our examination of the pessimists' arguments, and may gather up the results as follows: First of all, the metaphysical portico, so to speak, of this dark and gloomy edifice was found, after a slight inspection, to contain numerous cracks and flaws, and to offer anything but a certain and safe approach to the pessimists' desired restingplace. Again, the physical groundwork of the structure has proved itself, on a close scrutiny, to be essentially unstable, being built of nothing but purely fanciful hypotheses, and what is more, of hypotheses which frequently run directly counter to experience, and which involve incoherent and. self-contradictory conceptions. Once more, the psychology of pessimism, when its tangle of unexamined ideas is unravelled, shows itself to be radically erroneous. Lastly, the attempt to prove pessimism directly by an appeal to observation, must be regarded as a signal failure, since the method of observation pursued is wanting in those conditions of completeness, impartiality, and precision, which can alone give to a method a scientific value.

Such being the fruits of our investigation, we may, perhaps with safety, and even with profit, take our leave of pessimism as a system claiming by right of invincible arguments the adhesion of thoughtful minds. So far, it has

« ÎnapoiContinuă »