Page:Philosophical Review Volume 7.djvu/403

389 In a recent article Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, after repudiating the 'hedonistic basis' of Pessimism, and speaking of happiness in the scornful tone so fashionable in certain quarters, suggests four general grounds of a pessimistic view. Life may be condemned, he thinks, because it lacks happiness, or beauty, or truth, or goodness. These are suggested, it is to be observed, as four coördinate grounds of Pessimism. By this form of statement Mr. Schiller entirely obscures the fact that unhappiness itself may depend upon the other causes mentioned, as also upon still others not specified. In unhappiness he has given a general and all-inclusive statement on the subjective, affective side of the pessimist's judgment, and has then proceeded to restate the matter on the objective, ideational side. Clearness of thought and expression would require that the proposition should take one of the following forms, either of which, if standing alone, would be intelligible and consistent: Life is without value because of its unhappiness; or, Life is without value because of its ugliness, inscrutability, badness, brevity, etc. The first form gives the subjective, affective, and evaluative statement of the grounds of Pessimism. The second gives the objective, ideational, and constitutive side. One must admit, on the one hand, that life would not be unhappy, were it not ugly, inscrutable, bad, brief, etc., and, on the other, that we should not condemn it for any or all of these reasons viewed as mere intellectual judgments, and apart from the affective states to which the term 'unhappiness' is applied. As mere intellectual insights, or judgments of fact, the aspects of the world suggested above would never lead to Pessimism, because it is only through the felt experience of them that they become pregnant with despair. Indeed, one can readily conceive that these very judgments concerning life might arise under affective conditions which would make them the basis of an optimistic view. Thus the sceptic, who holds a brief for the impossibility of knowledge, and who has an absorbing intellectual and polemical interest in the defense of his position, would find a