The Value of Life 203Illusion diminishes his displeasure in the moment of self-
observation. Yet his judgment is false. The sufferings
over which a veil is drawn for him had to be really expe-
rienced in all their strength, and so he actually enters them
incorrectly on his life’s balance sheet. To arrive at a prop-
er judgment, the ambitious man would have to rid himself
of his ambition at the moment of contemplation. He
would have to review his life with no colored glass before
his spiritual eyes. Otherwise, he is like a merchant who
enters his own business zeal in the credit column.
Holders of this view can go still further, however. They
can say that the ambitious man must also realize that the
recognition for which he strives is worthless. Either on his
own or with the help of others, he will realize that recog-
nition by others can have no importance for a rational per-
son— after all, we can always be sure that “the majority
is wrong and the minority is right in all such matters that
are not fundamental questions of evolution or have not al-
ready been completely solved by science,” so that “who-
ever makes ambition his guiding star places his happiness
in life at the mercy of such a judgment.”^6 If the ambitious
man can say all this to himself, then he must characterize
as illusion what his ambition pictured as reality. And
therefore he must also characterize as illusion the feelings
that attach to these illusions. On this basis, it may be said
that the feelings of pleasure resulting from illusion must
also be stricken from the balance. What is left, then, rep-
resents the illusion-free sum of pleasure, and this is so
6.Philosophie des Unbewussten, Vol. II, p. 332.