Schopenhauer was led into his pessimism also by the spirit of opposition; his righteous wrath was aroused by the sardonic and inhuman optimism of Hegel, the arguments for which were so cogent, so Calvinistic, and so irrelevant that they would have lost none of their force if they had been proposed in hell. The best possible world and the worst possible world are, indeed, identical for that philosophy. Schopenhauer needed to change nothing in the [Pg 112] description of life, as the other idealists conceived it, in order to prove that life was a tragedy; for they were as romantic as himself and as far from feeling the intrinsic value of happiness, and the possibility of real progress. Real progress has little to do with perpetual evolution. It occurs only in certain places and times, when nature or art comes to the assistance of some definite interest already embodied, as the interest in security and mutual confidence, knowledge, or the fine arts is already embodied in mankind. Schopenhauer was not insensible to these achievements; he felt by instinct the infinity and luxuriance of the moral world. It was in part this secret sympathy with nature that alienated him from Christianity and from transcendental metaphysics. But because natural goods cannot be desired or possessed for ever, he thought their value was cancelled, even for those who desired and possessed them. The leaven of romanticism was still at work, forbidding him to recognise a natural order, with which a vital harmony might be established. The ground of life, the Will in all things, was something lurid and tempestuous, itself a psychological chaos. The alternative to theism in the mind of Schopenhauer was not naturalism but anarchy. This romantic travesty of life and this conception of metaphysical anarchy were inherited by Nietzsche [Pg 113] and regarded by him as the last word of philosophy. But he made the breach with Christianity still wider. The grief of Schopenhauer in the presence of such a world, his desperate and exotic remedy--the denial of the will--and his love of contemplation were all evidences of a mind still half Christian: his pessimism itself was so much homage to the faith he had lost. Such backward glances were not for the impetuous Nietzsche, who felt he was a prophet of the future, and really was one. Romantic anarchy delighted him; and he crowned it with a rakish optimism, as with the red cap of Liberty. He was in hearty sympathy with absolute Will; he praised it even for being vain and maleficent, if it was only proud enough to praise itself. [Pg 114] CHAPTER XI NIETZSCHE AND SCHOPENHAUER