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 4.3 Standard Approach: The ID3 Algorithm
4.3.1 A Worked Example: Predicting Vegetation Distributions
4.4 Extensions and Variations
4.4.1 Alternative Feature Selection and Impurity Metrics
4.4.2 Handling Continuous Descriptive Features
4.4.3 Predicting Continuous Targets
4.4.4 Tree Pruning
4.4.5 Model Ensembles
4.5 Summary
4.6 Further Reading
4.7 Exercises

5 Similarity-based Learning
5.1 Big Idea
5.2 Fundamentals
5.2.1 Feature Space
5.2.2 Measuring Similarity Using Distance Metrics
5.3 Standard Approach: The Nearest Neighbor Algorithm
5.3.1 A Worked Example
5.4 Extensions and Variations
5.4.1 Handling Noisy Data
5.4.2 Efficient Memory Search
5.4.3 Data Normalization
5.4.4 Predicting Continuous Targets
5.4.5 Other Measures of Similarity
5.4.6 Feature Selection
5.5 Summary
5.6 Further Reading
5.7 Epilogue
5.8 Exercises

6 Probability-based Learning
6.1 Big Idea
6.2 Fundamentals
6.2.1 Bayes’ Theorem
6.2.2 Bayesian Prediction
6.2.3 Conditional Independence and Factorization
6.3 Standard Approach: The Naive Bayes Model
6.3.1 A Worked Example

8
 6.4 Extensions and Variations
6.4.1 Smoothing
6.4.2 Continuous Features: Probability Density Functions
6.4.3 Continuous Features: Binning
6.4.4 Bayesian Networks
6.5 Summary
6.6 Further Reading
6.7 Exercises

7 Error-based Learning
7.1 Big Idea
7.2 Fundamentals
7.2.1 Simple Linear Regression
7.2.2 Measuring Error
7.2.3 Error Surfaces
7.3 Standard Approach: Multivariable Linear Regression with Gradient Descent
7.3.1 Multivariable Linear Regression
7.3.2 Gradient Descent
7.3.3 Choosing Learning Rates and Initial Weights
7.3.4 A Worked Example
7.4 Extensions and Variations
7.4.1 Interpreting Multivariable Linear Regression Models
7.4.2 Setting the Learning Rate Using Weight Decay
7.4.3 Handling Categorical Descriptive Features
7.4.4 Handling Categorical Target Features: Logistic Regression
7.4.5 Modeling Non-linear Relationships
7.4.6 Multinomial Logistic Regression
7.4.7 Support Vector Machines
7.5 Summary
7.6 Further Reading
7.7 Exercises

8 Evaluation
8.1 Big Idea
8.2 Fundamentals
8.3 Standard Approach: Misclassification Rate on a Hold-out Test Set
8.4 Extensions and Variations
8.4.1 Designing Evaluation Experiments
8.4.2 Performance Measures: Categorical Targets

9
 8.4.3 Performance Measures: Prediction Scores
8.4.4 Performance Measures: Multinomial Targets
8.4.5 Performance Measures: Continuous Targets
8.4.6 Evaluating Models after Deployment
8.5 Summary
8.6 Further Reading
8.7 Exercises

9 Case Study: Customer Churn

9.1 Business Understanding
9.2 Data Understanding
9.3 Data Preparation
9.4 Modeling
9.5 Evaluation
9.6 Deployment

10 Case Study: Galaxy Classification

10.1 Business Understanding
10.1.1 Situational Fluency
10.2 Data Understanding
10.3 Data Preparation
10.4 Modeling
10.4.1 Baseline Models
10.4.2 Feature Selection
10.4.3 The 5-level Model
10.5 Evaluation
10.6 Deployment

11 The Art of Machine Learning for Predictive Data Analytics

11.1 Different Perspectives on Prediction Models
11.2 Choosing a Machine Learning Approach
11.2.1 Matching Machine Learning Approaches to Projects
11.2.2 Matching Machine Learning Approaches to Data
11.3 Your Next Steps

A Descriptive Statistics and Data Visualization for Machine Learning

A.1 Descriptive Statistics for Continuous Features
A.1.1 Central Tendency
A.1.2 Variation

10
 A.2 Descriptive Statistics for Categorical Features
A.3 Populations and Samples
A.4 Data Visualization
A.4.1 Bar Plots
A.4.2 Histograms
A.4.3 Box Plots

B Introduction to Probability for Machine Learning

B.1 Probability Basics
B.2 Probability Distributions and Summing Out
B.3 Some Useful Probability Rules
B.4 Summary

C Differentiation Techniques for Machine Learning

C.1 Derivatives of Continuous Functions
C.2 The Chain Rule
C.3 Partial Derivatives

Bibliography
List of Figures
List of Tables
Index

11
Preface

In writing this book our target was to deliver an accessible, introductory text on the
fundamentals of machine learning, and the ways that machine learning is used in practice
to solve predictive data analytics problems in business, science, and other organizational
contexts. As such, the book goes beyond the standard topics covered in machine learning
books and also covers the lifecycle of a predictive analytics project, data preparation, feature
design, and model deployment.
The book is intended for use on machine learning, data mining, data analytics, or
artificial intelligence modules on undergraduate and post-graduate computer science,
natural and social science, engineering, and business courses. The fact that the book
provides case studies illustrating the application of machine learning within the industry
context of data analytics also makes it a suitable text for practitioners looking for an
introduction to the field and as a text book for industry training courses in these areas.
The design of the book is informed by our many years of experience in teaching
machine learning, and the approach and material in the book has been developed and road-
tested in the classroom. In writing this book we have adopted the following guiding
principles to make the material accessible:
1. Explain the most important and popular algorithms clearly, rather than overview the
full breadth of machine learning. As teachers we believe that giving a student deep
knowledge of the core concepts underpinning a field provides them with a solid basis
from which they can explore the field themselves. This sharper focus allows us to
spend more time introducing, explaining, illustrating and contextualizing the
algorithms that are fundamental to the field, and their uses.
2. Informally explain what an algorithm is trying to do before presenting the technical
formal description of how it does it. Providing this informal introduction to each
topic gives students a solid basis from which to attack the more technical material.
Our experience with teaching this material to mixed audiences of undergraduates,
post-graduates and professionals has shown that these informal introductions enable
students to easily access the topic.
3. Provide complete worked examples. In this book we have presented complete
workings for all examples, because this enables the reader to check their
understanding in detail.

12
Structure of the Book
When teaching a technical topic, it is important to show the application of the concepts
discussed to real-life problems. For this reason, we present machine learning within the
context of predictive data analytics, an important and growing industry application of
machine learning. The link between machine learning and data analytics runs through
every chapter in the book. In Chapter 1 we introduce machine learning and explain the role
it has within a standard data analytics project lifecycle. In Chapter 2 we provide a
framework for designing and constructing a predictive analytics solution, based on machine
learning, that meets a business need. All machine-learning algorithms assume a dataset is
available for training, and in Chapter 3 we explain how to design, construct, and quality
check a dataset before using it to a build prediction model.
Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 are the main machine learning chapters in the book. Each of
these chapters presents a different approach to machine learning: Chapter 4, learning
through information gathering; Chapter 5, learning through analogy; Chapter 6, learning
by predicting probable outcomes; and Chapter 7, learning by searching for solutions that
minimize error. All of these chapters follow the same two part structure
Part 1 presents an informal introduction to the material presented in the chapter,
followed by a detailed explanation of the fundamental technical concepts required to
understand the material, and then a standard machine learning algorithm used in
that learning approach is presented, along with a detailed worked example.
Part 2 of each chapter explains different ways that the standard algorithm can be
extended and well-known variations on the algorithm.

The motivation for structuring these technical chapters in two parts is that it provides a
natural break in the chapter material. As a result, a topic can be included in a course by just
covering Part 1 of a chapter (‘Big Idea’, fundamentals, standard algorithm and worked
example); and then—time permitting—the coverage of the topic can be extended to some
or all of the material in Part 2. Chapter 8 explains how to evaluate the performance of
prediction models, and presents a range of different evaluation metrics. This chapter also
adopts the two part structure of standard approach followed by extensions and variations.
Throughout these technical chapters the link to the broader predictive analytics context is
maintained through detailed and complete real-world examples, along with references to
the datasets and/or papers that the examples are based on.
The link between the broader business context and machine learning is most clearly
seen in the case studies presented in Chapters 9 (predicting customer churn) and 10 (galaxy
classification). In particular, these case studies highlight how a range of issues and tasks
beyond model building—such as business understanding, problem definition, data
gathering and preparation, and communication of insight—are crucial to the success of a
predictive analytics project. Finally, Chapter 11 discusses a range of fundamental topics in
machine learning and also highlights that the selection of an appropriate machine learning
approach for a given task involves factors beyond model accuracy—we must also match the
characteristics of the model to the needs of the business.

13
How to Use this Book
Through our years of teaching this material we have developed an understanding of what is
a reasonable amount of material to cover in a one-semester introductory module and on
two-semester more advanced modules. To facilitate the use of the book in these different
contexts, the book has been designed to be modular—with very few dependencies between
chapters. As a result, a lecturer using this book can plan their course by simply selecting the
sections of the book they wish to cover and not worry about the dependencies between the
sections. When presented in class, the material in Chapters 1, 2, 9, 10 and 11 typically take
two to three lecture hours to cover; and the material in Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 normally
take four to six lecture hours to cover.
In Table 1 we have listed a number of suggested course plans targeting different
contexts. All of these courses include Chapter 1 (Machine Learning for Predictive Data
Analytics) and Chapter 11 (The Art of Machine Learning for Predictive Data Analytics).
The first course listed (M.L. short deep) is designed to be a one-semester machine learning
course with a focus on giving the students a deep understanding of two approaches to
machine learning, along with an understanding of the correct methodology to use when
evaluating a machine learning model. In our suggested course we have chosen to cover all of
Chapters 4 (Information-based Learning) and 7 (Error-based Learning). However, Chapter
5 (Similarity-based Learning) and/or 6 (Probability-based Learning) could be used instead.
The M.L. short deep is also an ideal course plan for a short (1 week) professional training
course. The second course (M.L. short broad) is another one-semester machine learning
course. Here, however, the focus is on covering a range of machine learning approaches
and, again, evaluation is covered in detail. For a longer two-semester machine learning
course (M.L. long) we suggest covering data preparation (Section 3.6), all the machine
learning chapters, and the evaluation chapter.
There are contexts, however, where the focus of a course is not primarily on machine
learning. We also present to course paths that focus on the context of predictive data
analytics. The course P.D.A short defines a one-semester course. This course gives students
an introduction to predictive data analytics, a solid understanding of how machine learning
solutions should be designed to meet a business need, insight into how prediction models
work and should be evaluated, and includes one of the case studies. The P.D.A short is also
an ideal course plan for a short (1 week) professional training course. If there is more time
available then P.D.A long expands on the P.D.A. short course so that students gain a deeper
and broader understanding of machine learning, and also includes the second case study.

14
Online Resources
The website:

www.machinelearningbook.com

provides access to a wide range of material that supports the book. This material includes:
lecture slides, the complete set of images used in the book, video lectures based on the
book, code samples, and an errata list (hopefully short). Worked solutions for all end of
chapter exercises are available. For questions that are not marked with an ✻ a solutions
manual is available from the book website. Solutions for those questions that are marked
with an ✻ are contained in an instructors manual available from MIT Press on request.

15
Acknowledgements
We knew when we began writing this book that it would take a huge amount of work to
complete. We underestimated, however, the amount of support we would need and receive
from other people. We are delighted to take this opportunity to acknowledge these
contributions to the book. We would like to thank our colleagues and students for the help
and patience they extended to us over the last few years. We would also like to thank the
staff at MIT Press, particularly Marie Lufkin Lee, and our copy editor Melanie Mallon. We
are also very grateful to the two anonymous reviewers who provided insightful and helpful
comments on an early draft of the manuscript. Each of us has also been fortunate to have
the support of close friends and family which was invaluable in completing the book.
John would like to thank Robert Ross, Simon Dobnik, Josef van Genabith, Alan Mc
Donnell, Lorraine Byrne, and all his friends from basketball. He would also like to thank
his parents (John and Betty) and his sisters, without their support he would not have gotten
past long-division and basic spelling. Finally, he would like to acknowledge and thank
Aphra, this book would not have been started without her inspiration and would not have
been completed without her patience.
Brian would like to thank his parents (Liam and Roisín) and family for all of their
support, and acknowledge Pádraig Cunningham and Sarah Jane Delany who opened his
eyes to machine learning.
Aoife would like to thank her parents (Michael and Mairead) and family, and all of the
people who have supported her through her career—especially the much valued customers
of The Analytics Store who give her data to play with!

Table 1
Suggested course syllabi.

16
17
Notation

In this section we provide a short overview of the technical notation used throughout this
book.

18
Notational Conventions
Throughout this book we discuss the use of machine learning algorithms to train prediction
models based on datasets. The following list explains the notation used to refer to different
elements in a dataset. Figure 1[xix] illustrates the key notation using a simple sample dataset.

Figure 1
How the notation used in the book relates to the elements of a dataset.

19
Datasets
The symbol denotes a dataset.
A dataset is composed of n instances, (d1, t1) to (dn, tn), where d is a set of m
descriptive features and t is a target feature.
A subset of a dataset is denoted using the symbol with a subscript to indicate the
definition of the subset. For example, f=l represents the subset of instances from the
dataset where the feature f has the value l.

20
Vectors of Features
Lowercase boldface letters refer to a vector of features. For example, d denotes a
vector of descriptive features for an instance in a dataset, and q denotes a vector of
descriptive features in a query.

21
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 “These emmets, how little they are in our eyes!
We tread them to dust, and a troop of them dies,
Without our regard or concern,”
as Dr. Watts cheerfully observed of the poor little insects, even when
he was calling us to remark their wondrous forethought and industry.
And larger animals more nearly akin to us were little more “regarded”
than the ants, till the widening circles of our sympathies at last began
to embrace the higher races of the brute creation; and their
sufferings then, as a necessary consequence, immediately took a
prominent place among the difficulties of theology. Geology first gave
a shock to the received explanation of their destiny by proving that
animals died painful deaths æons before “man’s first disobedience”
could have taken place, or man himself had existence on this planet;
and since those, now distant, days of Dean Buckland’s
controversies, the questions so opened out have pressed continually
more upon the thought of humane and religious men. The faith for
which such men yearn in our day is to be assured—
“That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another’s gain.”
Not one of their grandsires, probably, ever entertained any similar
idea, but rather indulged a sublime contempt of the “poor Indian”
whose “untutored mind” permitted him to hope that his dog might
share his paradise.
These causes, then, I think,—namely, the growth of a finer sense
of pity for human woes, and the inclusion of the lower animals in the
scope of our sympathies,—suffice to explain in great measure the
reasons why some of the best of men in our generation feel the evil
and misery of the world, and display a leaning toward Pessimism
unexampled in harder times.
Nearly all religious men, looking back upon life, seem disposed to
be thankful on their own account, and to acknowledge that goodness
and mercy have followed them all the days of their lives. They have
not been “dealt with according to their sins,” but have many a time
been set free from nets of their own weaving, and helped out of the
mire and clay of vice and passion. Viewed from within, such appears
to be the common testimony concerning every good man’s career. It
is the inexplicable mysteries in the destinies of their neighbors, as
viewed from outside, and (as I have just said) the sufferings of the
harmless brutes, which causes such men now to doubt God and
think the world evil. Satan tempted the old Chaldæan by heaping
afflictions on his own person. He tries the modern Job more
cunningly,—by giving him, Asmodeus-fashion, a wide bird’s-eye view
of the woes and wrongs of other people.

To descend from the general proclivities of our age to those of

individuals toward Pessimism, the same paradox may be observed.
As it is by no means altogether a bad sign of the times that there is a
keener consciousness afloat of the extent to which pain and wrong
prevail in the world, so neither is it by any means an indication of a
bad disposition when a man takes a dark view of human nature and
of life. Timon may be a noble fellow, or very much the reverse. We
must study him in both characters.
The noble Timon has started with an unusual share of generosity
and sympathy, and has become embittered because he has found
other men less good and true than himself. There is a certain
average sincerity, average unselfishness, average generosity and
gratitude common among men. He who has a little above the
average of such fine qualities meets on all sides disappointment. He
finds people who display selfishness, where, as a matter of course,
he would have sacrificed his own convenience or interest to theirs;
people who are mean where he would have been liberal, and
suspicious where he was as open as the day; and, finally, people
who return his kindness with an ingratitude inexplicable to his
generous mind, rich in its own benevolence. What, then, can happen
to our Timon but to begin to mistrust those whom he finds so unlike
himself, to shut himself from them (and so, perhaps, provoke their
mistrust in turn), and very commonly to bestow much of his
disappointed affections on animals, on whose fidelity he finds he can
more surely depend, and whose wrongs at the hands of cruel men
still further deepen his disgust of his own kind? All this time, another
man, whose generosity and sincerity were, at starting, a little below
rather than above the average, has been passing through life
pleasantly astonished to find that his neighbors will show him more
kindness than (he is conscious) he would in their places display, and
rather more than less honest than he has reckoned to find them.
Thus, by a curious contradiction, the nobler-natured man is much
more liable than the baser to develop into the misanthrope; and it is
the lofty kind of scorn and bitterness properly belonging to him which
every Pessimist assumes, whether he truly feel it or not. It is always
sous entendu, in all tirades against human nature, that the speaker
is quite incapable of the weakness, folly, and wickedness he
condemns; and that, if he refers to the “dark side of Providence,” he
would have managed the universe on better principles. But it is
extremely questionable whether we ought to give unlimited credit to
the genuineness of the indignation of those gentlemen who
denounce the evils of the world, but never stir a finger to remove
them; and whose personal enjoyment of the good things of life—fine
houses, clothes, dinners, pictures, bric-à-brac, pleasant
conversation, and favorable reviews of their books—has, manifestly,
never been clouded by their sombre sense of the dreadful destiny of
mankind at large, nor their appetite for applause been impaired by
their profound conviction of the folly and contemptibility of the people
by whom it is offered.
A Timon, not at all of the nobler sort, seems to have been that
great light of recent German philosophy, Arthur Schopenhauer. As
Schopenhauer died childless, it will, I hope, hurt the feelings of no
one if we dissect his character candidly as that of the most
prominent Pessimist of the age. It will be instructive, I think, to learn
the “notes” of such a character,—to study, in short, of what kind of
stuff (so to speak) a Pessimist is occasionally made. In justice, we
must carry in mind that Schopenhauer accomplished a good deal in
the philosophic way, besides preaching Pessimism. He worked out a
metaphysical system of considerable depth and ingenuity,—one of
the merits of which, at all events, may be accounted that it is readily
applicable to quite other views than those of its author, respecting
the nature and destiny of mankind. With this formidable system,
elaborated in his great work, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, we
have, however (happily for me, and probably for my reader), for our
present purpose, no concern whatever, but only with his actions and
character, such as Miss Zimmern, condensing the original German
memoirs, sketched in a life-like and transparently truthful manner in
her Life of Schopenhauer.
The first “note” of Schopenhauer’s character, I should say, was his
Heartlessness. He seems scarcely to have loved anybody—in any
sense of the word worth considering—from his cradle to his grave.
He made, indeed, after his father’s death, much parade of respect
for his memory; but his filial piety, such as it was, stopped short at
this point. He disliked his sprightly, good-natured mother, and treated
her with singular insolence. As to friendship, he avowed his opinion
that “men of much intellectual worth, more especially if they have
genius, can have but few friends”; and he verified his own dictum as
a first-rate genius by having, so far as we may judge, no real friends
at all, though in later life, when he became celebrated, he had
numerous flatterers and disciples. Love was even less in
Schopenhauer’s way than friendship, unless we are to call by the
title the passion in its coarsest form. His opinion was that “the poetry
of love is mainly illusion, a glittering drapery meant to mantle the
solemnity of the thing as it really is” (p. 222); and his actions were
quite in accordance with this crass materialism. He led, his
biographer states, “no saintly ascetic life, nor did he pretend to this
eminence.... He despised women.... He was only different from
ordinary men in that he spoke of what others suppressed; and his
over-zealous disciples, who saw the god-like in all his acts, even
dragged these to the light of day.” His “careless dallying with beauty”
(a euphemism, I presume, for a loose life) but once brought him to
wish for a permanent union. The only woman whom he is recorded
to have desired to marry was an actress, who, at the time he was
“enraptured with her,” was (fit position for the wife of a great moral
philosopher!) the recognized mistress of Duke Carl August.
It has sometimes happened that men who have been lacking in
those family and friendly affections which are the most beautiful
things in human life have yet almost atoned for their deficiency by
their fervent “Enthusiasm of Humanity.” It is needless to say that
Schopenhauer’s character displayed an impartial negation of both
orders of feeling. He neither loved men nor women in particular, nor
man in general. He carefully defined himself to be not a misanthrope,
only a despiser of men (p. 83). The higher a man stood mentally, he
thought, the lower must his fellow-men appear. That it was the divine
part of the greatest to serve the least was the very last suggestion
which would have occurred to his mind. “I read,” he observed, “in the
face of the Apollo Belvidere, the just and deep displeasure felt by the
god of the Muses for the wretched obstinacy of the Philistines”; and,
doubtless, Arthur Schopenhauer figuratively drew himself up, and felt
as like the Apollo Belvidere as the corporeal circumstances of a
German philosopher might permit.
He was “penetrated with the conviction that he had been placed in
a world peopled with beings morally and intellectually contemptible,
from whom he must keep apart.” In his note-book (of rather a
different cast from that of Marcus Aurelius), he wrote this piece of
self-counsel: “Study to acquire an accurate and connected view of
the utter despicability of mankind in general, then of your
contemporaries, and of German scholars in particular.”
The second “note” in Schopenhauer’s character was his
exceeding Cowardice. The modern Socrates would have deserted
Athens at the plague, and run away at Potidæa. With what
poltroonery he would have behaved, when required to drink the
hemlock, it is impossible to imagine. When his country was in the
throes of war and political crises, Schopenhauer always carefully
moved out of the way. When there was any kind of infectious
disease prevalent, he fled to another city, so that half his journeys
were mere panic flights. He left Berlin for fear of the cholera, Naples
from alarm of the small-pox, and Verona because he took it into his
head that his snuff was poisoned. He slept with loaded pistols close
to his hand, and seized them at the slightest noise. When the
postman brought him a letter, he started. He used a cup of his own
to avoid the contagion which might lurk in a glass at a public table.
He labelled his valuables with deceptive names, and wrote his
business memoranda in Greek. As we have seen, he was not
bellicose. Only once in his life is it recorded that he struck a blow,
and that was at a woman. Finding an acquaintance of his landlady
presumptuous enough to hold a coffee-party in his anteroom,
Schopenhauer knocked her down with such violence that her right
arm was permanently disabled. Any other man, who had committed
an act of similar brutality in a moment of passion, would probably
have hastened to offer some compensation to his victim; but our
philosopher, on the contrary, hotly contested the poor woman’s suit
for legal redress, and quitted the town in disgust when he found
himself compelled to maintain her for life,—a period which (the non-
sympathetic reader will rejoice to learn) was extremely prolonged.
The writer of an exceedingly able and thoughtful review of
Schopenhauer’s philosophy in the Contemporary Review, some
years ago, observed that his unamiable traits are best excused by
his own candid avowal that he liked his own mental physiognomy
well enough, but his moral not at all. The unalterableness of the
natural character was one of his favorite dogmas. Certainly, the self-
training by which many a naturally nervous temperament has
disciplined itself into courage, a selfish one into generosity, and a
morose or peevish temper into gentleness, was as far as possible
from Schopenhauer’s plan of life; and it opens to us a rather
alarming idea of the society of the future, if his followers generally
should resolve to adopt his facile principle, and assume that their
“natural characters,” whatever they may chance to be,—selfish,
false, dissolute, or cruel,—are “unalterable.” Such liberty, however, is
probably reserved for those who may claim to be “men of genius”
like their master, since he absolved himself from the ordinary duties
incumbent on meaner mortals by the help of a theory which we may
call the Philosopher’s Anti-nomianism. “He weighed his duties
toward the world,” we are told, “in the balance with the weight and
intensity of his natural gifts, and he came to the conclusion that a
man gifted with genius, by merely being and working, sacrifices
himself for all mankind: therefore, he is free from the obligation of
sacrificing himself in particular individually. On this account, he may
ignore claims which others are bound to fulfil.”[14]
 But the third “note” was, I venture to think, the true key of
Schopenhauer’s character. It was Arrogance. The philosophers
whom the world has hitherto honored have been generally noted for
the opposite quality. As saints learn humility by gazing up at infinite
holiness above them, so sages acquire modesty by looking out on
the boundless ocean of truth, beside which their greatest discoveries
appear but as the pebbles which the child gathers by the shore. But
the philosophers who are so good as to enlighten us in these days
scarcely belong to the antiquated type of either a Socrates or a
Newton. The pride and conceit of Arthur Schopenhauer, at all
events, commenced in boyhood, and seems to have grown like a
snowball till he died of old age. His mother (described as a woman of
“modest, pleasing manners” and amiable character, who received
habitually in her house such men as Goethe, the Schlegels, Grimm,
and Wieland) depicts him thus, when a lad yet engaged in collegiate
studies: “Your ill-humor, your complaints of things inevitable, your
sullen looks, the extraordinary opinions you utter like oracles which
none may presume to contradict,—all this depresses me. Your
eternal quibbles, your laments over the stupid world and human
misery, give me bad nights and unpleasant dreams.”[15] This little
preliminary glance at the youth of twenty enables us to judge what
value should be attached to the plea urged on his behalf, that his
arrogance and bitterness were but the natural results of the neglect
with which his great book was received by an unappreciative public
and a jealous coterie of offended philosophers, the “necessary armor
of scorn and self-defence” which enabled him to hold his ground.
The boy at college, it seems, long before he had written a work to
instruct the world, or had experienced anything but kindness and
prosperity, the healthy, rich, gifted, and independent young lad, was
already habitually “lamenting over the stupid world and human
misery,” and uttering, with “sullen looks,” “oracles which none may
presume to contradict.”
As he grew older, Schopenhauer learned to express his good
opinion of himself and his works with serenest equanimity. No more
naïf expressions of self-complacency have perhaps ever been
penned than this gentleman’s eulogiums on his own productions; as,
for example, when he writes to the publisher of his work that its
“worth and importance are so great that I do not venture to express it
even toward you, because you could not believe me,” and proceeds
to quote a review “which speaks of me with the highest praise, and
says that I am plainly the greatest philosopher of the age, which is
really saying much less than the good man thinks.” “Sir,” he said to
an unoffending stranger who watched him across a table d’hôte
(where he habitually acted the part of local “lion”), “sir, you are
astonished at my appetite. True, I eat three times as much as you,
but, then, I have three times as much mind!” (p. 159.) The reader
who thinks that this speech could never have been spoken except in
jest and to produce a good-humored laugh has not yet studied
Schopenhauer’s saturnine temperament, to which a joke at his own
expense must have been quite inconceivable. To others, perhaps,
such barbarous intellectual insolence may seem a pardonable
reaction from the tone of self-depreciation (often exceedingly
insincere) which modern manners have enforced. But the old classic
pride was a very different thing from Schopenhauer’s aggressive
arrogance, wherewith he managed to blend gross and egregious
vanity in quite a novel combination. On a les défauts de ses qualités,
but not usually together two apparently contradictory defects. In our
simplicity, we should have anticipated that the man who considered
himself the greatest philosopher of his age, and talked about the
“loneliness of the heights” of intellectual grandeur, would have
disdained to trouble himself about such miserable things as common
newspaper reviews. We should have been, however, much mistaken
in such a guess. “Schopenhauer (we are told) began to read German
newspapers, now that they wrote about him. He caused the veriest
trifle that contained his name to be sent to him. He looked through all
philosophical works for a mention of himself. His intense contempt
for women wavered, when he saw they could feel interest in his
works.” What would Aristotle’s “Magnanimous Man” have said to this
kind of littleness? “Honor, from any other person” (than the good), “or
on the score of trifles, he will utterly despise, and likewise he will
despise dishonor.”[16]
 Let it be remembered, too, that this was in Schopenhauer’s old
age. For a young author to be nervously excited about the reception
of his works is nothing blameworthy or ridiculous. He is looking for
the confirmation of the yet uncertain whispers of his own
consciousness of ability, or to the extinction of his hopes. But this
exculpation cannot apply to a man advanced in life and of
established literary reputation, whose opinion of his own exalted gifts
had been fully expanded while he was yet a lad at college.
Is it too much to say that in this inordinate opinion of his own
powers and merits lies the secret of this man’s Pessimism, of his
contempt of other men, of his discontent with life, of his revolt
against Providence? It is not wonderful that a man who looks on his
fellows like Apollo Belvidere, slaying them with the arrows of his
scorn, should find them wretched and unlovable; for no man,
however humble, is ever truly seen by him who looks down on him,
and thus lacks all the insight of love and sympathy, and all the
charity of one who forgives as he hopes to be forgiven. It is not
wonderful that a man who estimates himself as supremely wise, and
condones his own faults on the score of the unalterableness of
natural character, should survey the world and find it a godless
desert. Probably no human heart ever yet bloomed out into gratitude
even under the brightest sunshine of prosperity, which had not once
been ploughed up by self-reproach and softened by tears of
repentance. In truth, any kind of religious sense is well-nigh
incompatible with such pride as we are discussing. The doors
whereby other men enter the Temple,—the tender guidance of
human affection, the awful strife of the higher self against passion
and sin, the sacred moral ambition after yet unattained purity and
goodness,—all these are closed to him. Schopenhauer’s religious
history is a confirmation of the truth that it is not the marble-palace
mind of the philosopher which God will visit so often as the humble
heart which lies sheltered from the storms of passion, and all trailed
over by the sweet blossoms of human affections.
It is actually ludicrous to compare this man’s intensely selfish,
vain, cowardly character with the magnificent compliments which he
paid to virtue in the abstract, and to the ideal he draws of the perfect
man, or “ascetic,” in whom the very sense of individuality, not to
speak of self-regard, is annihilated: “He will no longer regard himself
as a real existence, comprised within the rigid line of personality, and
thus insulated and differentiated from the rest of the universe. He will
regard his separate being as a mere transitory phenomenon, a
temporary objectivation of the sole real existence; and this
recognition of his true position must necessarily destroy
selfishness.... When a man ceases to draw an egotistic distinction
between himself and others, and takes as much part in their sorrows
as in his own, it naturally follows that such a one, recognizing his
own self in all beings, must regard the endless griefs of all beings as
his own, and thus appropriate to himself the sorrows of the whole
world.”[17] The modern “Man of Sorrows” (if we may venture on so
irreverent a comparison for the sake of the contrast) had, for his own
use, an easy method of “appropriating” the griefs of his kind. “We
gather,” says his keen-sighted critic of the Contemporary Review,
“from the accounts of his disciples, that he had arranged for himself
an existence more than tolerable; for, while free from positive
annoyance, he found a perfectly consistent and legitimate source of
pleasure in the disinterested contemplation of the idea of the world’s
sorrows.”[18] A more easy form of martyrdom it is hard to imagine.
Is it not somewhat surprising that a man like this, who, to do him
justice, made no pretence of practising what he taught, but said
openly, with cynical effrontery, “I preach sanctity, but I am no
saint,”[19] should have exercised any influence over his generation?
We read, however, that “his little band of disciples grew, and their
fanaticism reached a ludicrous point. One entreated him to found a
trust for the purpose of keeping watch that no syllable of his works
should ever be altered; another had his portrait painted and placed in
a room like a chapel,”[20] etc.
This particular hero-worship is, to my thinking, so portentous that I
have been tempted thus to study it at some length. For thousands of
years, the human race has gone on adding one noble type to
another in its Pantheon,—the old heathen patriotism and heroism of
a Theseus, a Codrus, a Curtius, a Regulus, the modest wisdom of a
Socrates, and the stoic grandeur of a Marcus Aurelius. Christianity
added yet saintlier virtues to the ideal,—the charity, the purity, the
religious fervor, and martyr devotion of a whole army of saints. Yet all
these “stars of our mortal night” can, it seems, be obscured and
forgotten; and men who might have known and honored and
followed them, like the Magi of old, prefer to dance after such a
flaring link-light as Schopenhauer lifted over his own head!
Observing this, and how his desolate doctrine is gaining ground, and
recognizing not a few of his personal characteristics (more especially
his arrogance) among other thinkers nearer home, we are tempted
to turn back fondly and regretfully to the humblest old-fashioned
goodness. Many of us had confidently trusted that, when knowledge
increased, wisdom and love would grow along with it; that, without
losing the sacred lessons of the past, mankind would obtain still
deeper insight into moral truth, and that phases of character would
appear more beautiful, more joyous, more perfectly rounded in all
the gifts and graces of humanity than the world yet has seen,—the
long-severed virtues of the hero and the saint combined at last.
Alas! if Schopenhauers are to increase and multiply among us,
these hopes have been visionary, indeed! As his character emerges
from his biography, and stands clearly revealed to sight, memories of
many a man and woman of small account in the world rise up and
range themselves in our thoughts for comparison opposite to this
great philosopher. We remember those who, instead of flying from
the terrors of pestilence or war, have freely gone to meet them at the
call of benevolence or patriotism. We remember those who, instead
of finding their fellow-men “despicable,” have been lifelong loving
friends, faithful and tender husbands, devoted parents and children,
ardent philanthropists, sacrificing wealth and health and every
enjoyment that they might relieve and bless the most miserable of
mankind,—the criminal, the diseased, the vicious, and abandoned.
We remember those who, instead of resting self-satisfied with the
“unalterableness” of their own moral defects, have striven day and
night, like the Pilgrim fighting on his knees against Apollyon, to purify
their hearts of every stain, and, instead of arraigning Providence
because their merits were insufficiently rewarded, have blessed God
most of all for their afflictions. We remember all these, and also we
remember the glory of peace and patience on their pain-worn faces;
and from the depths of our souls comes the verdict that the dullest
“Philistine” of them all was, in the scale of true nobleness, worth a
thousand pessimist philosophers.
Schopenhauer was, in truth, the best illustration which could be
found of the fallacy of the modern intellect-worship, the idolatry of
mere mental force, which is scarcely less stupid and ignoble than the
idolatry of the physical force of winds or waters. As baseness is
more contemptible in a king, and miserliness in a millionnaire, so are
all moral faults and littlenesses only more despicable when set on
the pedestal of genius. There are minds—and Schopenhauer’s was
one of them—whose brilliancy is that of a light-house. Its best use is
to disclose the cold and troubled sea, and the dreary rocks whereon
the unwary might make shipwreck.

The question, “How far is Pessimism true, and how far does the
actual state of the world justify us in pronouncing life to be an evil?”
is far too vast and too solemn to be treated in this brief paper. One
remark only must be made in abatement of the wide-sweeping
denunciations of the present order of things in which Pessimists
habitually indulge. If we take count of their arguments, we shall find
that at least one-third are built on the assumption (which nothing in
genuine philosophy warrants) that the “hypothesis of a God” involves
the attribution to him not only of supreme but of absolute power, and
generally of a power which includes self-contradictions. We should
sweep away no inconsiderable number of difficulties, if we could get
fairly out of reach of this ever-recurring fallacy, and hear no more
that God ought to make every creature absolutely happy, and also
absolutely virtuous; and illume the martyr’s glory, while invariably
extinguishing the martyr’s pile. And, again, another third of the
arguments of Pessimists rests on the yet more egregious and
fundamental mistake that suffering is always to be accounted an evil,
and may be lawfully weighed by them as such in holding the scales
of the world. The truth that it is “good to have been afflicted,” that out
of pain and grief and disappointment arise the purest virtues, the
tenderest sympathies, the loftiest courage, the divinest faith,—this
thrice-blessed truth, the very alphabet of spiritual experience, is, as a
rule, quite overlooked by great philosophers of the order of
Schopenhauer.
When all corrections and deductions are made, a residue of
profound, awful, inexplicable misery—misery of sinful man and
misery of sinless brutes—remains, alas! to form, doubtless, in time to
come, as in the ages which are past, the dread “Riddle of the painful
Earth.” We must expect it to press upon us ever more and more in
proportion as our sense of justice and love rises higher, and our
sympathies with unmerited suffering grow more acute. Whether the
shadow which that mystery casts on religion will hereafter be in any
degree relieved by fresh lights obtained through sounder theories of
Nature, it were idle to guess. One thing seems clear enough;
namely, that the spirit wherewith some modern Pessimists approach
the tremendous problem is one which can never lead to its solution,
and which in itself is calculated to form no inconsiderable addition to
the gloom of human existence. The world, to all who enter it, is very
much what their anticipations make of it,—full of matter for joy and
gratitude, or for repining and discontent. It appears beautiful or
dreary, according as they regard it through the cloudless, childlike
eyes of cheerful trust or through the dim and distorting spectacles of
doubt and despair. No generation so miserable has yet seen the light
as one which should be trained to expect neither justice nor love
from God, and to “cultivate a connected view of the general
despicability of mankind.”
After all, as Schopenhauer himself confessed (though he cared so
little to practise the lesson), character—or, as Mr. Matthew Arnold
would say, conduct—is the great matter to which all theories are
subordinate. “Moral goodness belongs to an order of things which is
above this life, and is incommensurable with any other perfection.”
There is a certain value in the old test whereby a tree is known by its
fruits. To such of us as have kept any foundations of faith still
standing, the presumption is surely enormous that the intellectual
system which naturally produces courage, trustfulness, and loving-
kindness, must be nearer to the Eternal Verities than the blighting
theory which brings forth such thorns and thistles as deformed the
character of the great Pessimist Philosopher of the nineteenth
century.

FOOTNOTES:
[14] Life, p. 80.
[15] Life, p. 32.
[16] Ethics, Book IV., chap. iii.
[17] Life, p. 208.
[18] Contemporary Review, February, 1873.
[19] Life, p. 108.
[20] Life, p. 240.
 ZOOPHILY.
It is a comforting reflection in a world still “full of violence and cruel
habitations” that the behavior of men to domestic animals must have
been, on the whole, more kind than the reverse. Had it been
otherwise, the “set” of the brute’s brains, according to modern theory,
would have been that of shyness and dread of us, such as is actually
exhibited by the rabbit which we chase in the field and the rat we
pursue in the cupboard. In countries where cats are exceptionally ill-
treated (e.g., the south of France), poor puss is almost as timid as a
hare; while the devotion and trustfulness of the dog toward man in
every land peopled by an Aryan race seem to prove that, with all our
faults, he has not found us such bad masters after all. Dogs love us,
and could only love us, because we have bestowed on them some
crumbs of love and good-will, though their generous little hearts have
repaid the debt a thousand-fold. The “Shepherd’s Chief Mourner”
and “Grey Friar’s Bobby” had probably received in their time only a
few pats from the horny hands of their masters, and a gruff word of
approval when the sheep had been particularly cleverly folded. But
they recognized that the superior being condescended to care for
them, and their adoring fidelity was the ready response.[21]
Two different motives of course have influenced men to such
kindness to domestic animals, one being obvious self-interest, and
the necessity, if they needed the creature’s services, to keep it in
some degree of health and comfort; and the other being the special
affection of individual men for favorite animals. Of the frequent
manifestation of this latter sentiment in all ages, literature and art
bear repeated testimony. We find it in the parable of Nathan; in the
pictured tame lion running beside the chariot of Rameses; in the
story of Argus in the Odyssey; in the episode in the Mahabharata,
where the hero refuses to ascend to heaven in the car of Indra
without his dog; in the exquisite passage in the Zend-Avesta, where
the lord of good speaks to Zoroaster, “For I have made the dog, I
who am Ahura Mazda”; in the history of Alexander’s hero,
Bucephalus; in Pliny’s charming tales of the boy and the pet dolphin,
and of the poor slave thrown down the Gemonian stairs, beside
whose corpse his dog watched and wailed till even the stern hearts
of the Roman populace were melted to pity.
But neither the every-day self-interested care of animals by their
masters, nor the occasional genuine affection of special men to
favorite animals,—which have together produced the actual
tameness most of the domesticated tribes now exhibit,—seems to
have led men to the acknowledgment of moral obligation on their
part toward the brutes. As a lady will finger lovingly a bunch of
flowers, and the next moment drop it carelessly on the roadside or
pluck the blossoms to pieces in sheer thoughtlessness, so the great
majority of mankind have always treated animals.
“We tread them to death, and a troop of them dies
Without our regard or concern,”
cheerfully remarked Dr. Watts concerning ants; but he might have
said the same of our “unconcern” in the case of the cruel destruction
of thousands of harmless birds and beasts and the starvation of their
young, and of the all but universal recklessness of men in dealing
with creatures not representing value in money.
It is not, however, to be reckoned as surprising that our forefathers
did not dream of such a thing as duty to animals. They learned very
slowly that they owed duties to men of other races than their own.
Only on the generation which recognized thoroughly for the first time
(thanks in great measure to Wilberforce and Clarkson) that the negro
was “a man and a brother” did it dawn that, beyond the negro, there
were other still humbler claimants for benevolence and justice.
Within a few years passed both the emancipation of the West Indian
slaves and that first act for prevention of cruelty to animals of which
Lord Erskine so truly prophesied that it would prove, “not only an
honor to the Parliament of England, but an era in the civilization of
the world.”
But the noble law of England—which thus forestalled the moralists
and set an example which every civilized nation, with one solitary
exception, has followed—remains even to this day, after sixty years,
still in advance of the systematic teachers of human duty. Even while
every year sermons specially inculcating humanity to animals are
preached all over the kingdom, nobody (so far as the present writer
is aware) has attempted formally to include Duty to the Lower
Animals in any complete system of ethics as an organic part of the
Whole Duty of Man.[22]
Without pretending for a moment to fill up this gap in ethics, I
would fain offer to those who are interested in the subject a
suggestion which may possibly serve as a scaffolding till the solid
edifice be built by stronger hands. We must perchance yet wait to
determine what are the right actions of man to brute; but I do not
think we need lose much time in deciding what must be the right
sentiment, the general feeling wherewith it is fit we should regard the
lower animals. If we can but clearly define that sentiment, it will
indicate roughly the actions which will be consonant therewith.
In the first place, it seems to me that a sense of serious
responsibility toward the brutes ought to replace our “lady-and-the-
nosegay” condition of insouciance. The “ages before morality” are at
an end at last, even in this remote province of human freedom. Of all
the grotesque ideas which have imposed on us in the solemn
phraseology of divines and moralists, none is more absurd than the
doctrine that our moral obligations stop short where the object of
them does not happen to know them, and assures us that, because
the brutes cannot call us to account for our transgressions, nothing
that we can do will constitute a transgression. To absolve us from
paying for a pair of boots because our bootmaker’s ledger had
unluckily been burned would be altogether a parallel lesson in
morality. It is plain enough, indeed, that the creature who is (as we
assume) without a conscience or moral arbitrament must always be
exonerated from guilt, no matter what it may do of hurt or evil; and
the judicial proceedings against, and executions of, oxen and pigs in
the Middle Ages for manslaughter were unspeakably absurd. But not
less absurd, on the other side, is it to exonerate men, who have
consciences and free will, when they are guilty of cruelty to brutes,
on the plea not that they, but the brutes are immoral and
irresponsible.[23]
A moral being is not moral on one side of him only, but moral all
round, and toward all who are above, beside, and beneath him: just
as a gentleman is a gentleman not only to the king, but to the
peasant; and as a truthful man speaks truth to friend and stranger.
Just in the same way, the “merciful man is merciful to his beast,” as
he is merciful to the beggar at his gate. I may add that every noble
quality is specially tested by its exhibition in those humbler directions
wherein there is nothing to be gained by showing it and nothing to be
lost by contrary behavior.
There is a passage from Jeremy Bentham, quoted in Mrs.
Jamieson’s Commonplace Book and elsewhere, which will recur to
many readers at this point: “The day may come,” he says, “when the
rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never
could have been withheld from them but by the hand of tyranny. It
may come one day to be recognized that the number of legs, the
villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons
insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the caprice of a
tormentor.... The question is not, Can they reason? or Can they
speak? but, Can they suffer?”
Long before Bentham, a greater mind, travelling along a nobler
road of philosophy, laid down the canon which resolves the whole
question. Bishop Butler affirmed that it was on the simple fact of a
creature being sentient—i.e., capable of pain and pleasure—that
rests our responsibility to save it pain and give it pleasure. There is
no evading this obligation, then, as regards the lower animals, by the
plea that they are not moral beings. It is our morality, not theirs,
which is in question. There are special considerations which in
different cases may modify our obligation, but it is on such special
reasons, not on the universal non-moral nature of the brutes (as the
old divines taught), that our exoneration must be founded; and the
onus lies on us to show cause for each of them.
The distinction between our duties to animals and our duties to our
human fellow-creatures lies here. As regards them both, we are
indeed forbidden to inflict avoidable pain, because both alike are
sentient. But, as regards the brutes, our duties stop there: whereas,
as regards men, they being moral as well as sentient beings, our
primary obligations toward them must concern their higher natures,
and include the preservation of the lives which those higher natures
invest with a sanctity exclusively their own. Thus, we reach the
important conclusion that the infliction of avoidable pain is the
supreme offence as regards the lower animals, but not the supreme
offence as regards man. Sir Henry Taylor’s noble lines go to the very
root of the question:—
“Pain, terror, mortal agonies, which scare
Thy heart in man, to brutes thou wilt not spare.
Are theirs less sad and real? Pain in man
Bears the high mission of the flail and fan;
In brutes, ’tis purely piteous.”
Pain is the one supreme evil of the existence of the lower animals,
an evil which (so far as we can see) has no countervailing good. As
to death, a painless one—so far from being the supreme evil to them
—is often the truest mercy. Thus, instead of the favorite phrase of
certain physiologists, that “they would put hecatombs of brutes to
torture to save the smallest pain of a man,” true ethics bids us regard
man’s moral welfare only as of supreme importance, and anything
which can injure it (such, for example, as the practice, or sanction of
the practice, of cruelty) as the worst of evils, even if along with it
should come a mitigation of bodily pain. On this subject, the present
Bishop of Winchester has put the case in a nutshell. “It is true,” he
said, “that man is superior to the beast, but the part of man which we
recognize as such is his moral and spiritual nature. So far as his
body and its pains are concerned, there is no particular reason for
considering them more than the body and bodily pains of a brute.”
Of course, the ground is cut from under us in this whole line of
argument by those ingenious thinkers who have recently disinterred
(with such ill-omened timeliness for the vivisection debate)
Descartes’ supposed doctrine, that the appearance of pain and
pleasure in the brutes is a mere delusion, and that they are only
automata,—“a superior kind of marionettes, which eat without
pleasure, cry without pain, desire nothing, know nothing, and only
simulate intelligence as a bee simulates a mathematician.” If this
conclusion, on which modern science is to be congratulated, be
accepted, it follows, of course, that we should give no more
consideration to the fatigue of a noble hunter than to the creaking
wood of a rocking-horse; and that the emotions a child bestows on
its doll will be more serious than those we bestow on a dog who dies
of grief on his master’s grave. Should it appear to us, however, on
the contrary (as it certainly does to me), that there is quite as good
evidence that dogs and elephants reason as that certain
physiologists reason, and a great deal better evidence that they—the
animals—feel, we may perhaps dismiss the Cartesianism of the
nineteenth century, and proceed without further delay to endeavor to
define more particularly the fitting sentiment of man to sentient
brutes. We have seen we ought to start with a distinct sense of some
degree of moral responsibility as regards them. What shape should
that sense assume?
We have been in the habit of indulging ourselves in all manner of
antipathies to special animals, some of them having, perhaps, their
source and raison d’être in the days of our remote but not illustrious
ancestors,
“When wild in woods the noble savage ran”;
or those of a still earlier date, who were, as Mr. Darwin says,
“arboreal in their habits,” ere yet we had deserved the reproach of
having “made ourselves tailless and hairless and multiplied folds to
our brain.” Other prejudices, again, are mere personal whims, three-
fourths of them being pure affectation. A man will decline to sit in a
room with an inoffensive cat, and a lady screams at the sight of a
mouse, which is infinitely more distressed at the rencontre than she.
I have known an individual, otherwise distinguished for audacity,
“make tracks” across several fields to avoid a placidly ruminating
cow. In our present stage of civilization, these silly prejudices are
barbarisms and anachronisms, if not vulgarisms, and should be
treated like exhibitions of ignorance or childishness. For our remote
progenitors before mentioned, tusky and hirsute, struggling for
existence with the cave bear and the mammoth in the howling
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