The more he secures new pleasure, spiritual or material, the more he incurs pain not yet experienced.  One evil removed only gives place to another; one advantage gained soon proves itself a disadvantage.  His very reason is the cause of his doubt and suspicion; his intellect, with which he wants to know everything, declares itself to be incapable of knowing anything in its real state; his finer sensibility, which is the sole source of finer pleasure, has to experience finer suffering.  The more he asserts himself, the more he has to sacrifice himself.  These conflictions probably led Kant to call life “a trial time, wherein most succumb, and in which even the best does not rejoice in his life.”  “Men betake themselves,” says Fichte, “to the chase after felicity. . . .  But as soon as they withdraw into themselves and ask themselves, ‘Am I now happy?’ the reply comes distinctly from the depth of their soul, ’Oh no; thou art still just as empty and destitute as before!’ . . .  They will in the future life just as vainly seek blessedness as they have sought it in the present life.”

It is not without reason that the pessimistic minds came to conclude that ’the unrest of unceasing willing and desiring by which every creature is goaded is in itself unblessedness,’ and that ’each creature is in constant danger, constant agitation, and the whole, with its restless, meaningless motion, is a tragedy of the most piteous kind.’  ’A creature like the carnivorous animal, who cannot exist at all without continually destroying and tearing others, may not feel its brutality, but man, who has to prey on other sentient beings like the carnivorous, is intelligent enough, as hard fate would have it, to know and feel his own brutal living.’  He must be the most miserable of all creatures, for he is most conscious of his own misery.  Furthermore, ’he experiences not only the misfortunes which actually befall him, but in imagination he goes through every possibility of evil.’  Therefore none, from great kings and emperors down to nameless beggars, can be free from cares and anxieties, which ‘ever flit around them like ghosts.’

5.  The Mystery of Life.

Thus far we have pointed out the inevitable conflictions in life in order to prepare ourselves for an insight into the depth of life.  We are far from being pessimistic, for we believe that life consists in confliction, but that confliction does not end in confliction, but in a new form of harmony.  Hope comes to conflict with fear, and is often threatened with losing its hold on mind; then it renews its life and takes root still deeper than before.  Peace is often disturbed with wars, but then it gains a still firmer ground than ever.  Happiness is driven out of mind by melancholy, then it is re-enforced by favourable conditions and returns with double strength.  Spirit is dragged down by matter from its ideal heaven, then, incited by shame, it tries a higher flight.  Good is opposed by evil, then it gathers more strength and vanquishes its foe.  Truth is clouded by falsehood, then it issues forth with its greater light.  Liberty is endangered by tyranny, then it overthrows it with a splendid success.