Now if we have so far convinced ourselves a priori by the most universal of all considerations, by investigation of the first, elementary features of human life, that such a life, by its whole tendency and disposition, is not capable of any true bliss or happiness, but is essentially suffering in many forms and a tragic state in every way, we might now awaken this conviction much more vividly within us, if, by proceeding more a posteriori, we turned to more definite instances, brought pictures to the imagination, and described by examples the unspeakable misery presented by experience and history, wherever we look, and whatever avenue we explore. But the chapter would be without end, and would carry us far from the standpoint of universality which is essential to philosophy. Moreover, such a description might easily be regarded as a mere declamation on human misery, such as has often been made already, and as such it might be charged with one-sidedness, because it started from particular facts. From such reproach and suspicion our perfectly cold and philosophical demonstration of the inevitable suffering at the very foundation of the nature of life is free; for it starts from the universal and is conducted a priori. However, confirmation a posteriori can easily be obtained everywhere. Anyone who has awakened from the first dreams of youth; who has considered his own and others’ experience; who has looked at life in the history of the past and of his own time, and finally in the works of the great poets, will certainly acknowledge the result, if his judgement is not paralysed by some indelibly imprinted prejudice, that this world of humanity is the kingdom of chance and error. These rule in it without mercy in great things as in small; and along with them folly and wickedness also wield the scourge. Hence arises the fact that everything better struggles through only with difficulty; what is noble and wise very rarely makes its appearance, becomes effective, or meets with a hearing, but the absurd and perverse in the realm of thought, the dull and tasteless in the sphere of art, and the wicked and fraudulent in the sphere of action, really assert a supremacy that is disturbed only by brief interruptions. On the other hand, everything excellent or admirable is always only an exception, one case in millions; therefore, if it has shown itself in a lasting work, this subsequently exists in isolation, after it has outlived the rancour of its contemporaries. It is preserved like a meteorite, sprung from an order of things different from that which prevails here. But as regards the life of the individual, every life-history is a history of suffering, for, as a rule, every life is a continual series of mishaps great and small, concealed as much as possible by everyone, because he knows that others are almost always bound to feel satisfaction at the spectacle of annoyances from which they are for the moment exempt; rarely will they feel sympathy or compassion. But perhaps at the end of his life, no man, if he be sincere and at the same time in possession of his faculties, will ever wish to go through it again. Rather than this, he will much prefer to choose complete non-existence. The essential purport of the world-famous monologue in Hamlet is, in condensed form, that our state is so wretched that complete non-existence would be decidedly preferable to it. Now if suicide actually offered us this, so that the alternative “to be or not to be” lay before us in the full sense of the words, it could be chosen unconditionally as a highly desirable termination (“a consummation devoutly to be wish’d”).163 There is something in us, however, which tells us that this is not so, that this is not the end of things, that death is not an absolute annihilation. Similarly, what has been said by the father of history (Herodotus, vii, 46) has not since been refuted, namely that no person has existed who has not wished more than once that he had not to live through the following day. Accordingly, the shortness of life, so often lamented, may perhaps be the very best thing about it. If, finally, we were to bring to the sight of everyone the terrible sufferings and afflictions to which his life is constantly exposed, he would be seized with horror. If we were to conduct the most hardened and callous optimist through hospitals, infirmaries, operating theatres, through prisons, torture-chambers, and slave-hovels, over battlefields and to places of execution; if we were to open to him all the dark abodes of misery, where it shuns the gaze of cold curiosity, and finally were to allow him to glance into the dungeon of Ugolino where prisoners starved to death, he too would certainly see in the end what kind of a world is this meilleur des mondes possibles.164 For whence did Dante get the material for his hell, if not from this actual world of ours? And indeed he made a downright hell of it. On the other hand, when he came to the task of describing heaven and its delights, he had an insuperable difficulty before him, just because our world affords absolutely no materials for anything of the kind. Therefore, instead of describing the delights of paradise, there was nothing left for him but to repeat to us the instruction imparted to him there by his ancestor, by his Beatrice, and by various saints. But it is clear enough from this what kind of a world this is. Certainly human life, like all inferior goods, is covered on the outside with a false glitter; what suffers always conceals itself. On the other hand, everyone parades whatever pomp and splendour he can obtain by effort, and the more he is wanting in inner contentment, the more he desires to stand out as a lucky and fortunate person in the opinion of others. Folly goes to such lengths, and the opinion of others is a principal aim of the efforts of everyone, although the complete futility of this is expressed by the fact that in almost all languages vanity, vanitas, originally signifies emptiness and nothingness. But even under all this deception, the miseries of life can very easily increase to such an extent—and this happens every day—that death, which is otherwise feared more than everything, is eagerly resorted to. In fact, if fate wants to show the whole of its malice, even this refuge can be barred to the sufferer, and in the hands of enraged enemies he may remain exposed to merciless and slow tortures without escape. In vain does the tortured person then call on his gods for help; he remains abandoned to his fate without mercy. But this hopeless and irretrievable state is precisely the mirror of the invincible and indomitable nature of his will, the objectivity of which is his person. An external power is little able to change or suppress this will, and any strange and unknown power is just as little able to deliver him from the miseries resulting from the life that is the phenomenon of this will. As in everything, so in the principal matter, a man is always referred back to himself. In vain does he make gods for himself, in order to get from them by prayers and flattery what can be brought about only by his own will-power. While the Old Testament made the world and man the work of a God, the New saw itself compelled to represent that God as becoming man, in order to teach that holiness and salvation from the misery of this world can come only from the world itself. It is and remains the will of man on which everything depends for him. Sannyasis, martyrs, saints of every faith and name, have voluntarily and gladly endured every torture, because the will-to-live had suppressed itself in them; and then even the slow destruction of the phenomenon of the will was welcome to them. But I will not anticipate the further discussion. For the rest, I cannot here withhold the statement that optimism, where it is not merely the thoughtless talk of those who harbour nothing but words under their shallow foreheads, seems to me to be not merely an absurd, but also a really wicked, way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the unspeakable sufferings of mankind. Let no one imagine that the Christian teaching is favourable to optimism; on the contrary, in the Gospels world and evil are used almost as synonymous expressions.165