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Reference: The Story of Philosophy

This paper presents Chapter VII Section 5 from the book THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY by WILL DURANT. The  contents are from the 1933 reprint of this book by TIME INCORPORATED by arrangement with Simon and Schuster, Inc.

The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the present understanding.

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V. The World as Evil

But if the world is will, it must be a world of suffering.

And first, because will itself indicates want, and its grasp is always greater than its reach. For every wish that is satisfied there remain ten that are denied. Desire is infinite, fulfillment is limited—“it is like the alms thrown to a beggar, that keeps him alive today in order that his misery may be prolonged tomorrow. … As long as our consciousness is filled by our will, so long as we are given up to the throng of desires with their constant hopes and fears, so long as we are subject to willing, we can never have lasting happiness or peace.” And fulfillment never satisfies; nothing is so fatal to an ideal as its realization. “The satisfied passion oftener leads to unhappiness than to happiness. For its demands often conflict so much with the personal welfare of him who is concerned that they undermine it.” Each individual bears within himself a disruptive contradiction; the realized desire develops a new desire, and so on endlessly. “At bottom this results from the fact that the will must live on itself, for there exists nothing besides it, and it is a hungry will.”

In every individual the measure of the pain essential to him was determined once for all by his nature; a measure which could neither remain empty, nor be more than filled. … If a great and pressing care is lifted from our breast, … another immediately replaces it, the whole material of which was already there before, but could not come into consciousness as care because there was no capacity left for it. … But now that there is room for this it comes forward and occupies the throne.

Desire is infinite, fulfillment is limited. And fulfillment never satisfies; nothing is so fatal to an ideal as its realization. Each individual bears within himself a disruptive contradiction; the realized desire develops a new desire, and so on endlessly. But there is a natural desire to evolve.

COMMENT: There is actual pleasure in evolving even when there is no end to evolution.

Again, life is evil because pain is its basic stimulus and reality, and pleasure is merely a negative cessation of pain. Aristotle was right: the wise man seeks not pleasure, but freedom from care and pain. 

All satisfaction, or what is commonly called happiness, is, in reality and essence, negative only. … We are not properly conscious of the blessings and advantages we actually possess, nor do we prize them, but think of them merely as a matter of course, for they gratify us only negatively, by restraining suffering. Only when we have lost them do we become sensible of their value; for the want, the privation, the sorrow, is the positive thing, communicating itself” directly to us. … What was it that led the Cynics to repudiate pleasure in any form, if it was not the fact that pain is, in a greater or less degree, always bound up with pleasure? … The same truth is contained in that fine French proverb: Ie mieux est l’ennemi du bien [the better is enemy of the good]—Ieave well enough alone.

Schopenhauer is a pessimist. It is true as he says that life is evil because pain is its basic stimulus and reality, and pleasure is merely a negative cessation of pain.

COMMENT: But there is positive pleasure in research and discovery that leads to evolution. 

Life is evil because “as soon as want and suffering permit rest to a man, ennui is at once so near that he necessarily requires diversion,”—i. e., more suffering. Even if the socialist Utopia were attained, innumerable evils would be left, because some of them—like strife—are essential to life; and if every evil were removed, and strife were altogether ended, boredom would become as intolerable as pain. So “life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and ennui. … After man had transformed all pains and torments into the conception of hell, there remained nothing for heaven except ennui.” The more successful we become, the more we are bored. “As want is the constant scourge of the people, so ennui is the scourge of the fashionable world. In middle-class life ennui is represented by the Sundays and want by the week-days.”

Life is evil because the higher the organism the greater the suffering. The growth of knowledge is no solution. 

For as the phenomenon of will becomes more complete, the suffering becomes more and more apparent. In the plant there is as yet no sensibility, and therefore no pain. A certain very small degree of suffering is experienced by the lowest species of animal life—Infusoria and Radiata; even in insects the capacity to feel and suffer is still limited. It first appears in ‘” high degree with the complete nervous system of vertebrate animals, and always in a higher degree the more intelligence develops. Thus, in proportion as knowledge attains to distinctness, as consciousness ascends, pain also increases, and reaches its highest degree in man. And then, again, the more distinctly a man knows—the more intelligent he is—the more pain he has; the man who is gifted with genius suffers most of all.

Life is evil because if all strife were altogether ended, boredom would become as intolerable as pain. We observe that the higher the organism the greater the suffering. The growth of knowledge is no solution. 

He that increaseth knowledge, therefore, increaseth sorrow. Even memory and foresight add to human misery; for most of our suffering lies in retrospect or anticipation; pain itself is brief. How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself! 

Finally, and above all, life is evil because life is war. Everywhere in nature we see strife, competition, conflict, and a suicidal alternation of victory and defeat. Every species “fights for the matter, space, and time of the others.” 

The young hydra, which grows like a bud out of the old one, and afterwards separates itself from it, fights, while it is still joined to the old one, for the prey that offers itself, so that the one snatches it out of the mouth of the other. But the bull-dog ant of Australia affords us the most extraordinary example of this kind; for if it is cut in two, a battle begins between the head and the tail. The head seizes the tail with its teeth, and the tail defends itself bravely by stinging the head; the battle may last for half an hour, until they die or are dragged away by other ants. This contest takes place every time the experiment is tried.  … Yunghahn relates that he saw in Java a plain, as far as the eye could reach, entirely covered with skeletons, and took it for a. battle-field; they were, however, merely the skeletons of large turtles, … which come this way out of the sea to lay their eggs, and are then attacked by wild dogs who with their united strength lay them on their backs, strip off the small shell from the stomach, and devour them alive. But often then a tiger pounces upon the dogs. … For this these turtles are born. … Thus the will to live everywhere preys upon itself, and in different forms is its own nourishment, till finally the human race, because it subdues all the others, regards nature as a manufactory for its own use. Yet even the human race … reveals in itself with most terrible distinctness this conflict, this variance of the will with itself; and we find homo homini lupus [man is a wolf to man]. 

Sorrow increases with knowledge for most of our suffering lies in retrospect or anticipation; pain itself is brief. Everywhere in nature we see strife, competition, conflict, and a suicidal alternation of victory and defeat. 

The total picture of life is almost too painful for contemplation; life depends on our not knowing it too well. 

If we should bring clearly to a man’s sight the terrible sufferings and miseries to which his life is constantly exposed, he would be seized with horror; and if we were to conduct the confirmed optimist through the hospitals, infirmaries, and surgical operating-rooms, through the prisons, torture-chambers, and slave kennels, over battle-fields and places of execution; it we were to open to him all the dark abodes of misery, where it hides itself from the glance of cold curiosity, and, finally, allow him to look into the starving dungeons of Ugolino, he too would understand at last the nature of this “best of all possible worlds.” For whence did Dante take the materials of his hell but from our actual world? And yet he made a very proper hell out of it. But when, on the other hand, he came to describe heaven and its delights, he had an insurmountable difficulty before him, for our world affords no materials at all for this. … Every epic and dramatic, poem can only represent a struggle, an effort, a fight for happiness; never enduring and complete happiness itself. It conducts its heroes through a thousand dangers and difficulties to the goal; as soon as this is reached it hastens to let the curtaIn fall; for now there would remain nothing for it to do but to show that the glittering goal in which the hero expected to find happiness had only disappointed him, and that after its attainment he was no better off than before.

The total picture of life is almost too painful for contemplation; life depends on our not knowing it too well. 

We are unhappy married, and unmarried we are unhappy. We are unhappy when alone, and unhappy in society: we are like hedge-hogs clustering together for warmth, uncomfortable when too closely packed, and yet miserable when kept apart. It is all very funny; and “the life of every individual, if we survey it as a whole, … and only lay stress on its most significant features, is really always a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.” Think of it: 

At the age of five years to enter a spinning-cotton or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing the same mechanical labor, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. But this is the fate of millions, and that of millions more is analogous to it. … Again, under the firm crust of the planet dwell powerful forces of nature, which, as soon as some accident affords them free play, must necessarily destroy the 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.

The life of every individual, if we survey it as a whole, and only lay stress on its most significant features, is really always a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.

In the face of all this, “optimism is a bitter mockery of men’s woes”; and “we cannot ascribe to the Theodicy” of Leibnitz, “as a methodical and broad unfolding of optimism, any other merit than this, that it gave occasion later for the immortal Candide of the great Voltaire; whereby Leibnitz’ oft-repeated and lame excuse for the evil of the world—that the bad sometimes brings about the good—received a confirmation which was unexpected by him.” In brief, “the nature or life throughout presents itself to us as intended and calculated to awaken the conviction that nothing at all is worth our striving, our efforts and struggles; that all good things are vanity, the world in all its ends bankrupt, and life a business which does not cover expenses.”

To be happy, one must be as ignorant as youth. Youth thinks that willing and striving are joys; it has not yet discovered the weary insatiableness of desire, and the fruitlessness of fulfillment; it does not yet see the inevitableness of defeat. 

The cheerfulness and vivacity of youth are partly due to the fact that when we are ascending the hill of life, death is not visible; it lies down at the bottom of the other side. … Towards the close of life, every day we live gives us the same kind of sensation as the criminal experiences at every step on his way to the gallows. … To see how short life is, one must have lived long. … Up to our thirty-sixth year we may be compared, in respect to the way in which we use our vital energy, to people who live on the interest of their money; what they spend today they have again tomorrow. But from the age of thirty-six onward, our position is like that of the investor who begins to entrench on his capital. … It is the dread of this calamity that makes love of possession increase with age. … So far from youth being the happiest period of life, there is much more truth in the remark made by Plato, at the beginning of the Republic that the prize should rather be given to old age, because then at last a man is freed from the animal passion which has hitherto never ceased to disquiet him. … Yet it should not be forgotten that, when this passion is extinguished, the true kernel of life is gone, and nothing remains but the hollow shell; or, from another point of view, life then becomes like a comedy which, begun by real actors, is continued and brought to an end by automata dressed in their clothes. 

The nature or life throughout presents itself to us as intended and calculated to awaken the conviction that nothing at all is worth our striving, our efforts and struggles.

At the end, we meet death. Just as experience begins to coordinate itself into wisdom, brain and body begin to decay. “Everything lingers for but a moment, and hastens on to death.” And if death bides its time it is but playing with us as a cat with a helpless mouse. “It is clear that as our walking is admittedly nothing but a constantly-prevented falling, so the life of our bodies is nothing but a constantly-prevented dying, an ever-postponed death.” “Among the magnificent ornaments and apparel of Eastern despots there is always a costly vial of poison.” The philosophy of the East understands the omnipresence of death, and gives to its students that calm aspect and dignified slowness of carriage, which comes of a consciousness of the brevity of personal existence. The fear of death is the beginning of philosophy, and the final cause of religion. The average man cannot reconcile himself to death; therefore he makes innumerable philosophies and theologies; the prevalence of a belief in immortality is a token of the awful fear of death. 

The fear of death is the beginning of philosophy, and the final cause of religion. The average man cannot reconcile himself to death; the prevalence of a belief in immortality is a token of the awful fear of death. 

Just as theology is a refuge from death, so insanity is a refuge from pain. “Madness comes as a way to avoid the memory of suffering”; it is a saving break in the thread of consciousness; we can survive certain experiences or fears only by forgetting them. 

How unwillingly we think of things which powerfully injure our interests, wound our pride, or interfere with our wishes; with what difficulty do we determine to lay such things before our intellects for careful and serious investigation. … In that resistance of the will to allowing what is contrary to it to come under the examination of the intellect lies the place at which madness can break in upon the mind. … If the resistance of the will against the apprehension of some knowledge reaches such a degree that that operation is not performed in its entirety, then certain elements or circumstances become for the intellect completely suppressed, because the will cannot endure the sight of them; and then, for the sake of the necessary connections, the gaps that thus arise are filled up at pleasure; thus madness appears. For the intellect has given up its nature to please the will; the man now imagines what does not exist. Yet the madness which has thus arisen is the lethe of unendurable suffering; it was the last remedy of harassed nature, i. e., of the will.*

*A source of Freud. 

Just as theology is a refuge from death, so insanity is a refuge from pain. 

The final refuge is suicide. Here at last, strange to say, thought and imagination conquer instinct. Diogenes is said to have put an end to himself by refusing to breathe;—what a victory over the will to live! But this triumph is merely individual; the will continues in the species. Life laughs at suicide, and smiles at death; for every deliberate death there are thousands of in-deliberate births. “Suicide, the willful destruction of the single phenomenal existence, is a vain and foolish act, for the thing-in-itself—the species, and life, and will in general—remains unaffected by it, even as the rainbow endures however fast the drops which support it for the moment may chance to fall.” Misery and strife continue after the death of the individual, and must continue, so long as will is dominant in man. There can be no victory over the ills of life until the will has been utterly subordinated to knowledge and intelligence. 

Misery and strife continue after the death of the individual, and must continue, so long as will is dominant in man. There can be no victory over the ills of life until the will has been utterly subordinated to knowledge and intelligence. 

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Reference: The Story of Philosophy

This paper presents Chapter VII Section 4.1 from the book THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY by WILL DURANT. The  contents are from the 1933 reprint of this book by TIME INCORPORATED by arrangement with Simon and Schuster, Inc.

The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the present understanding.

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IV. The World as Will

1. The Will to Live

Almost without exception, philosophers have placed the essence of mind in thought and consciousness; man was the knowing animal, the animal rationale. “This ancient and universal radical error, this enormous proton pseudos, [first lie, Initial mistake] … must before everything be set aside.”* “Consciousness is the mere surface of our minds, of which, as of the earth, we do not know the inside but only the crust.” Under the conscious intellect is the conscious or unconscious will, a striving, persistent vital force, a spontaneous activity, a will of imperious desire. The intellect may seem at times to lead the will, but only as a guide leads his master; the will “is the strong blind man who carries on his shoulders the lame man who can see.” We do not want a thing because we have found reasons for it, we find reasons for it because we want it; we even elaborate philosophies and theologies to cloak our desires. Hence Schopenhauer calls man the “metaphysical animal”: other animals desire without metaphysics. “Nothing is more provoking, when we are arguing against a man with reasons and explanations, and taking all pains to convince him, than to discover at last that he will not understand, that ‘We have to do with his will.” Hence the uselessness of logic: no one ever convinced anybody by logic; and even logicians use logic only as a source of income. To convince a man, you must appeal to his self-interest, his desires, his will. Observe how long we remember our victories, and how soon we forget our defeats; memory is the menial of will.” “In doing accounts we make mistakes much oftener in our own favor than to our disadvantage; and this without the slightest dishonest intention.” “On the other hand, the understanding of the stupidest man becomes keen when objects are in question that closely concern his wishes”; in general, the intellect is developed by danger, as in the fox, or by want, as in the criminal. But always it seems subordinate and instrumental to desire; when it attempts to displace the will, confusion follows. No one is more liable to mistakes than he who acts only on reflection. 

*Schopenhauer forgets (or does he take his lead from?) Spinoza’s emphatic statement: “Desire is the very essence of man.” Fichte had also emphasized the will. 

We do not want a thing because we have found reasons for it, we find reasons for it because we want it. Hence the uselessness of logic: no one ever convinced anybody by logic. To convince a man, you must appeal to his self-interest, his desires, his will. Schopenhauer’s will appears to be the same thing as the reactive mind of Hubbard. 

Consider the agitated strife of men for food, mates, or children; can this be the work of reflection? Certainly not; the cause is the half conscious will to live, and to live fully. “Men are only apparently drawn from in front; in reality they are pushed from behind”; they think they are led on by what they see, when in truth they are driven on by what they feel,—by instincts of whose operation they are half the time unconscious. Intellect is merely the minister of foreign affairs; “nature has ‘Produced it for the service of the individual will. Therefore it is only designed to know things so far as they afford motives for the will, but not to fathom them or to comprehend their true being.” “The will is the only permanent and unchangeable element in the mind; … it is the will which,” through continuity of purpose, “gives unity to consciousness and holds together all its ideas and thoughts, ac- companying them like a continuous harmony.” It is the organ-point of thought. 

The cause of the agitated strife of men for food, mates, or children is the half conscious will to live. They are driven on by instincts of whose operation they are half the time unconscious. “The will is the only permanent and unchangeable element in the mind.”

Character lies in the will, and not in the intellect; character too is continuity of purpose and attitude: and these are will. Popular language is correct when it prefers the ”heart” to the “head”; it knows (because it has not reasoned about it) that a “good will” is profounder and more reliable than a clear mind; and when it calls a man “shrewd,” “knowing,” or “cunning” it implies its suspicion and dislike. “Brilliant qualities of mind win admiration, but never affection”; and “all religions promise a reward … for excellences of the Will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding.” 

Popular language correctly prefers the ”heart” (will) to the “head” (intellect). A “good will” is profounder and more reliable than a clear mind.

Even the body is the product of the will. The blood, pushed on by that will which we vaguely call life, builds its own vessels by wearing grooves in the body of the embryo; the grooves deepen and close up, and become arteries and veins. The will to know builds the brain just as the will to grasp forms the hand, or as the will to eat develops the digestive. tract.* Indeed, these pairs—these forms of will and these forms of flesh—are but two sides of one process and reality. The relation is best seen in emotion, where the feeling and the internal bodily changes form one complex unit.** 

*This is the Lamarckian view of growth and evolution as due to desires and functions compelling structures and begetting organs. 
**A source for the James-Lange theory of emotion?

The act of will and the movement of the body are not two different things objectively known, which the bond of causality unites; they do not stand in the relation of cause and effect; they are one and the same, but they are given in entirely different ways,—immediately, and again in perception. … The action of the body is nothing but the act of the will objectified. This is true of every movement of the body; … the whole body is nothing but objectified will. … The parts of the body must therefore completely correspond to the principal desires through which the will manifests itself; they must be the visible expression of these desires. Teeth, throat and bowels are objectified hunger; the organs of generation are objectified sexual desire. … The whole nervous system constitutes the antennae of the will, which it stretches within and without. … As the human body generally corresponds to the human will generally, so the individual bodily structure corresponds to the individually modified will, the character of the individual.

Even the body is the product of the will. 

The intellect tires, the will never; the intellect needs sleep, but the will works even in sleep. Fatigue, like pain, has its seat in the brain; muscles not connected with the cerebrum (like the heart) never tire.* In sleep the brain feeds; but the will requires no food. Hence the need for sleep is greatest in brain-workers. (This fact, however, “must not mislead us into extending sleep unduly; for then it loses in intensity … and becomes mere loss of time.”) In sleep the life of man sinks to the vegetative level, and then “the will works according to its original and essential nature, undisturbed from without, with no diminution of its power through the activity of the brain and the exertion of knowing, which is the heaviest organic function; … therefore in sleep the whole power of the will is directed to the maintenance and improvement of the organism. Hence all healing, all favorable crises, take place in sleep.” Burdach was right when he declared sleep to be the original state. The embryo sleeps almost continuously, and the infant most of the time. Life is “a struggle against sleep: at first we win ground from it, which in the end it recovers. Sleep is a morsel of death borrowed to keep up and renew that part of life which has been exhausted by the day.” It is our eternal foe; even when we are awake it possesses us partly. After all, what is to be expected of heads even the wisest of which is every night the scene of the strangest and the most senseless dreams, and which has to take up its meditations again on awakening from them?”

*But is there no such thing as the satiation or exhaustion of desire? In profound fatigue or sickness even the wlll to live fades. 

The intellect tires, the will never; the intellect needs sleep, but the will works even in sleep.

Will, then, is the essence of man. Now what if it is also the essence of life in all its forms, and even of “inanimate” matter? What if will is the long-sought-for, the long-despaired-of, “thing-in-itself,”—the ultimate inner reality and secret essence of all things? 

Let us try, then, to interpret the external world in terms of will. And let us go at once to the bottom; where others have said that will is a form of force let us say that force is a form of will. To Hume’s question—What is causality?—we shall answer, Will. As will is the universal cause in ourselves, so is it in things; and unless we so understand cause as will, causality will remain only a magic and mystic formula, really meaningless. Without this secret we are driven to mere occult qualities like “force,” or “gravity,” or “affinity”; we do not know what these forces are, but we know—at least a little more clearly—what will is; let us say, then, that repulsion and attraction, combination and decomposition, magnetism and electricity, gravity and crystallization, are Will. Goethe expressed this idea in the title of one of his novels, when he called the irresistible attraction of lovers die Wahlverwandschaften—“elective affinities.” The force which draws the lover, and the force which draws the planet, are one. 

As will is the universal cause in ourselves, so is it in things. Repulsion and attraction, combination and decomposition, magnetism and electricity, gravity and crystallization, are Will. The force which draws the lover, and the force which draws the planet, are one. 

So in plant life. The lower we go among the forms of life the smaller we find the role of intellect; but not so with will. 

That which in us pursues its ends by the light of knowledge, but here … only strives blindly and dumbly in a one-sided and unchangeable manner, must yet in both cases come under the name of Will. … Unconsciousness is the original and natural condition of all things, and therefore also the basis from which, in particular species of beings, consciousness results as their highest efflorescence; wherefore even then unconsciousness always continues to predominate. Accordingly, most existences are without consciousness; but yet they act according to the laws of their nature,—i. e., of their will. Plants have at most a very weak analogue of consciousness; the lowest species of animals only the dawn of it. But even after it has ascended through the whole series of animals to man and his reason; the unconsciousness of plants, from which it started, still remains the foundation, and may be traced in the necessity, for sleep.

The lower we go among the forms of life the smaller we find the role of intellect; but not so with will. Consciousness appears only in the highest forms of life.

Aristotle was right: there is a power within that moulds every form, in plants and planets, in animals and men. “The instinct of animals in general gives us the best illustration of what remains of teleology in nature. For as instinct is an action similar to that which is guided by the conception of an end, and yet is entirely without this; so all construction in nature resembles that which is guided by the conception of an end, and yet is entirely without it.” The marvelous mechanical skill of animals shows how prior the will is to the intellect. An elephant which had been led through Europe, and had crossed hundreds of bridges, refused to advance upon a weak bridge, though it had seen many horses and men crossing it. A young dog fears to jump down from the table; it foresees the effect of the fall not by reasoning (for it has no experience of such a fall) but by instinct. Orangoutangs warm themselves by a fire which they find, but they do not feed the fire; obviously, then, such actions are instinctive, and not the result of reasoning; they are the expression not of intellect but of will.

Instincts are the expression not of intellect but of will. The marvelous mechanical skill of animals shows how prior the will is to the intellect. 

The will, of course, is a will to live, and a will to maximum life. How dear life is to all living things!—and with what silent patience it will bide its time! “For thousands of years galvanism slumbered in copper and zinc, and they lay quietly beside silver, which must be consumed in flame as soon as all three are brought together under the required conditions. Even in the organic kingdom we see a dry seed preserve the slumbering force of life through three thousand years, and, when at last the favorable circumstances occur, grow up as a plant.” Living toads found in limestone lead to the conclusion that even animal life is capable of suspension for thousands of years. The will is a will to live; and its eternal enemy is death. 

To Schopenhauer any force exists because of will. The will is a will to live; and its eternal enemy is death. 

But perhaps it can defeat even death?

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