The thesis which I wish to maintain in answer to the first problem just indicated, is that the worth of life is ultimately measured in terms of sensibility, feeling, or affection;[1] and that, apart from states of sensibility, feeling, or affection, life can have no value for beings constituted as men are. Psychologically considered, our nature presents but one side to the direct and immediate experience of weal or woe; through this one side alone do we really "know good and evil." Applied to the view of the optimist, this thesis means that, however numerous may be the reasons he assigns for his belief that life is good, as, for example, that it brings to him knowledge, beauty, moral development, friendship, love, etc., yet it is possible to reduce all of these elements of the Good to a common denominator, by reference to the affective states in which they must all alike be experienced, if they are to be good at all. And this because the very notion of the Good contains, as an essential and inexpugnable element, such reference to the affective states of conscious beings.
Conceive a world of beings otherwise endowed like ourselves, but without capacity for feeling; and, further, suppose life to continue to run its course with cognitive and volitional powers unimpaired. In a world of creatures so constituted there could be no good or evil, no better or worse, but merely indifferent fact, which might run through the whole gamut of change without affecting at all any of the beings that cognized it. For such a being "one thing would be as important or unimportant as the next, or rather not important or unimportant at all, but simply an existing fact. All predicates expressing relations of value would be wholly unintelligible to him."[2] Although such a state represents an abstraction impossible in fact, there are certain psychical states of which we have frequent experience, which enable us to represent and understand its meaning. When, for
- ↑ In view of the varying terminology of psychologists, I shall employ these terms indifferently.
- ↑ Paulsen, Introd. to Phil. (Eng. trans.), p. 230. See also his System der Ethik, Vol. I, p. 229, where he says: "In der That, daran ist kein Zweifel, gäbees Gefühle der Befriedigung und des Gegenteils überhaupt nicht, dann gäbe es auch keine Wertunterschiede, dann würden gut und schlecht sinnlose Wörter sein, oder vielmehr, sie würden in unserer Rede überhaupt nicht vorkommen."
