All happiness is negative in character, and never positive. Only pain and want can be felt positively. Happiness is merely the absence of pain, for it follows upon the satisfaction of a wish. Some want or need is the condition which precedes every pleasure. But with the satisfaction, the wish, and therefore the pleasure, cease. The satisfaction can never be more than deliverance from a pain or want. We observe that the days of our life were happy after they have given place to unhappy ones. In proportion as pleasures increase, the capacity for them decreases. What is customary is no longer felt as a pleasure. Achievement is difficult, but when attained it is nothing but deliverance from some sorrow or want. Therefore we value our blessings and advantages only when we have lost them, for the deprivation, the need, is the positive factor. Man's real existence is only in the present, and the present is slipping ever into the past. There is thus a constant transition into death. The future is quite uncertain, and always short. Our existence, therefore, is a constant hurrying of the present, into the dead past, {46} a constant dying. On the physical side, the life of the body is but an ever-postponed death. In the end death must conquer, and he only plays for a little with his prey before he swallows it up. With such intensity did Schopenhauer feel that pessimism was the only possible conclusion, that he maintained that optimism was not only absurd, but really a wicked way of thought. For optimism is a bitter mockery of the unspeakable suffering of humanity. He revolted against the theory of Leibnitz, who maintained that this is the best of all possible worlds. It is, on the contrary, he declared, the worst of all possible worlds. Optimism is at bottom the unmerited self-praise of the will to live, the real originator of the world, which views itself complacently in its works. It is not only a false, but also a pernicious doctrine. For it presents life to us as a desirable condition, and happiness as its end. Everyone believes that he has a just claim to happiness and pleasure, and if these do not fall to his lot, he believes that he is wronged. It is far more correct to regard misery and suffering, crowned by death, as the end of our life, for it is these which lead to the denial of the will to live. It is difficult to conceive how men can deceive themselves and be persuaded that life is there to be thankfully enjoyed, and that man exists in order to be happy. The constant illusion and disillusion seem intended to awaken the conviction, that nothing at all is worth our striving, our efforts, or our struggles, and that all good things are but empty vanity. The truth is, he says, we ought to be wretched and we are. The world is a hell, which surpasses that of Dante. One need look only at man's treatment of his fellow-men.