XIII. The Value of Life (Optimism and Pessimism)

But the holder of this view can go even further. He can say the ambitious man must make clear to himself that the public recognition which he craves is a thing without value. By himself, or with the guidance of others, he must attain the insight that rational beings cannot attach any value to recognition by others, seeing that “in all matters which are not vital questions of development, or which have not been definitely settled by science,” it is always as certain as anything can be “that the majority is wrong and the minority right.” “Whoever makes ambition the lode-star of his life puts the happiness of his life at the mercy of so fallible a judgment” ( Philosophie des Unbewussten, vol. ii, p. 332). If the ambitious man acknowledges all this to himself, he is bound to regard all the imaginary realities of his ambition as illusions, including even the feelings which attach themselves to the illusions produced by his ambition. This is the reason why it-could be said that we must also strike out of the balance-sheet of our life-values whatever is produced by illusions in our feelings of pleasure. What remains after that represents the sum-total of pleasure in life deprived of illusions, and this sum is so small compared with the sum-total of pain that life is no enjoyment and non-existence preferable to existence.