Against this idea that the happiness of the race will be the eventual result of progress, Hartmann employs the following arguments: “The happiest people are those who are the rudest and most primitive, and, among civilised races, the uneducated classes. It is well known that the progress of education increases discontent. The progress of science contributes little or nothing to the absolute happiness of the world. Practically speaking, this progress is of advantage to politics, social life, morality, and the arts; but factories, steam-boats, railways, and telegraphs, have so far done no positive good to humanity.”[235] Hartmann frequently recurs to the conclusion that the primitive are happier than the civilised, and that “the lower classes, inferior and rude, are happier than the rich who are well educated and great; that idiots are happier than the intelligent, and that, as a general rule, the less sensitive a man’s nervous system may be, the happier he is, as his capacity for feeling pain is not so much in excess of his capacity for enjoyment, and his illusion is therefore greater. With the progressive development of humanity, however, not only is there an increase in the extent of human needs, but in the sensitiveness of the nervous system, and in the cultivation of the mind. In consequence, the balance of pain over pleasure increases, and the illusion is destroyed, that is to say, knowledge comes of the misery of life, of the vanity of most of the pleasures. Misery itself increases as much as knowledge of misery, as experience has shown; and the apparent increase of happiness in the world, due to the progress of universe, is merely superficial. Having reached this extremely pessimistic conclusion, that it is impossible for humanity to attain happiness, Hartmann proceeds to inquire into the real destiny of man. He would be no true philosopher if he did not hold that the world was created according to a general plan, and that it follows a regular course tending towards a definite end. “We have seen,” he says, “how that in the present world all has been arranged in the wisest, and for the most part the best way, and that it should therefore be regarded as the best possible of worlds. Notwithstanding this, however, it is supremely miserable, and worse than if it did not exist at all.” Being convinced of the illusory nature of its hopes, humanity “must definitely renounce all pretensions to positive happiness, and aspire only to a freedom from pain, to annihilation or Nirvâna. This, however, must not be merely the attitude of solitary individuals, but humanity at large must cry out for annihilation. This is the only possible outcome of the third and last phase of illusion.”