It is easy to see, under such circumstances, that a school of criticism or negation of the pessimistic doctrines should have gained many adherents. Very few, on the other hand, have embraced pessimistic doctrines because of any power being inherent in them to resolve the difficulties of life. A German pessimistic philosopher, Mailaender,[239] shared fully Schopenhauer’s opinions as to the misery of human life, but opposed the latter’s doctrine of resignation and Nirvâna as the solution of the general problem of life. Mailaender accepted the three stages of human illusion as expounded by Hartmann, but attacked vigorously the view of facilitating the cosmic process by acquiescence in the will to live. “Indeed,” he cried, “your advice is that we should sacrifice ourselves to the cosmos, we are to choose a career, to learn a trade, acquire money, property, fame, power, and so forth; we are to marry and to beget offspring; by such advice you are merely undoing with your own hands the sole merit of your work, the analysis of illusion. You suddenly advise the very man who has got behind all these illusions to succumb to them again, as if an illusion, although it has been recognised, could still deceive and exercise its power.”[240] Mailaender takes an entirely different view of the problem. Like his predecessors, he is convinced of the futility of happiness, but he has achieved an original view of the cosmic process. He holds that an unaccountable and divine Being existed before the creation of the world. Before disappearing “this divinity gave birth to the universe.” By this means, complete annihilation was made possible. “The world,” says Mailaender, “is but the means for bringing about a condition of non-existence, and is the only possible means by which that end could be attained. God knew that only by creating a real world could we pass from existence into non-existence.” Maileander regards as certain “that the universe tends towards universal non-existence.”[241] This tendency is characterised by the weakening of the total amount of energy, so that “every individual at the close of the weakening process to which his energy is submitted, is led in the course of his development to the point at which his desire for annihilation may be fulfilled.”[242] Life on our planet, he says, ought to be regarded as a halting-place on the road to death. In order to appreciate fully the happiness brought by death, it is necessary first to taste of life, and that is why the instinct of self-preservation is so well developed in animals. Man passes first through a phase of development in which he is like any other animal. “As with them, the will to live is stronger than the will to die. Life is clung to with extreme pertinacity, and death is proportionately execrated.” “At first, not only the fear of death increases, but equally the love of life.” Terror of death becomes acuter. Animals, knowing nothing of death, only fear it instinctively