region and atmosphere of his thoughts, it is like passing into a new zone and climate. If we still call his view pessimism, we must admit that it is, to use his own phrase, "Dionysiac pessimism," one that affirms life despite or even because of suffering and change and death, and so practically as good as optimism—one might say better than the soft sweet thing which often goes by that name. He speaks of Dionysiac pessimism as his proprium and ipsissimum.[1] e If nature, in her ceaseless flow of change and accident, gives a chance for greatness, it is to him enough.[2]
IV
Some details in his picture of the world may now be given, though they are not absolutely new. (1) Let us guard, he says, against conceiving of the world as a living or organic thing. Toward what should it develope? From what should it be nourished? How could it grow and increase? Living organic things are simply phenomena in it—and late and rare phenomena. (2) Nor should we regard it as a machine—a machine is something constructed for an end, and the world has no marks of being constructed in this way; we really do it too much honor in speaking of it as a machine. (3) We should guard against assuming that the regular cyclic movements of our and neighboring planets are everywhere—there may be much ruder and more contradictory movements, our astral order being an exception, and chaos marking the world as a whole (chaos in the sense of an absence, not of necessity, but of order, organization, form, beauty). (4) There is no occasion for blaming or praising the world. We should avoid ascribing to it heartlessness and unreason or the opposite. It is neither perfect nor beautiful, nor noble, and has no wish to be—it does not at all strive to imitate man and none of our æsthetic or moral judgments hit it. It has not even an impulse of self-preservation, or impulses of any kind. (5) It also knows no laws. Let us be on our guard against saying that there are laws in nature—there are only necessities: there is no one who commands, no one who obeys, no one who transgresses. Moreover, since there are no ends in nature, there is strictly speaking no accident; only in
