Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/425

 LUDWIG GUMPLOWJCZ 411

who are content with themselves and the world. This association of ideas is far from exact. On the contrary, the facts are precisely the reverse. The pessimist in world-philosophy is usually an optimist in life. The troublous course of the world does not surprise him ; he expects nothing better; he knows that the world is evil, that it cannot be otherwise. Thus he has no ground whatever for being unsatisfied with life; it is as it always was, and always will be. He enjoys des Lebens Unverstand as a comedy of nature. The case is different with the optimist in world-phi- losophy. Convinced that things may be better if man will only better himself, he stumbles against rude disappointments at every step, and he is constantly complaining that men, and with them life itself, is ever failing to make improvement. In eternal expectation of better times, he experiences constantly new disappointments and falls from one despair into another. The optimist in world-philosophy usually presents to us in life the picture called up by the word "pessimist."'

Conformably to this general description I found him the gentlest of men, the type of kindly suavity and apparent content- ment with his lot, which was hard even then, as he was absolutely confined to Graz and to the tender care of his beloved invalid wife. As to the latter, I was unable to see her on that occasion, as her health did not permit, but three years later, when I again visited Graz and enjoyed a second prolonged interview with Gumplowicz, I was so fortunate as to meet her a few minutes in the park and converse with her. She was a highly cultivated and refined lady with a well-stored mind and charming manners, speaking French without the slightest accent. I could well understand his devotion to such a person.

It was he who had prevailed upon the Wagner Publishing House in Innsbruck to publish Mrs. Johanna Odenwald-Unger's German translation of my Pure Sociology, and had also volun- teered to correct the proofs. I visited Innsbruck in 1906 while the work was in press, and went thence to Graz. He saw the work through and in his many letters evinced a profound interest in my views, though often so much opposed to his own.

Toward the end of 1907 his health began to fail, and in a letter dated November 15, 1907, he mentions it and says: "The doctor describes my condition as 'nervous prostration in conse- quence of a nervous shock,' " but he did not intimate at that time


 * Ibid., pp. 643, 644.