sharp point of contrast, first serves to throw into clear relief the real worth of the object for our common sensibilities, it may be reasoned that the most correct estimate of life is formed when the possibility of its loss most distinctly impresses itself on our minds.

But supposing that this preliminary objection to the pessimist's mode of estimating life is invalid, and that the scale of pleasure must be regarded as beginning with the first outward manifestation of gladness, one might still, with good reason, decline to accept the foregoing cheerless interpretation of everyday human experience. Even if we are to reckon only moments of distinctly visible enjoyment, we may surely argue that in an average life these greatly outnumber the moments of positive suffering. We suppose that hardly a pessimist will dispute that, in the case of all children and young persons with an ordinary degree of vitality and in average circumstances, the sum of pleasurable experience greatly exceeds that of painful ones, and this is to concede a good deal, since youth is a good fraction of every life, and the whole of a great many lives. Even when external circumstances are very unfavourable, an energetic faithful nature will find sources of gladness for itself. Who that observes the dirty ill-clad urchin of our London streets is not often impressed with the vivacity of the youthful mind, seemingly well-nigh inextinguishable, and with the abundant fountain of merriment which may be inclosed within so thin and seemingly fragile a bodily vessel? One wonders how often well-dressed passers-by waste their pity by throwing it to some squalid unhealthy-looking figure who knows full well how to draw amusement from any trivial incident of his ever-busy environment, and experiences perhaps as fair a proportion of glad moments as his unsuspecting observer.

This illustration leads to another consideration which may be urged against the pessimist's delineation of human life. It makes no allowance for the common elasticity of man's spirit, through which he is able not only to bear suffering with a quiet resignation, and so to diminish its intensity, but also to some extent to escape from suffering, even when its causes cannot be reached. Even were one to allow-what the pessimist is wholly unable to prove that, so far as external influences are concerned, there is more to occasion pain than pleasure; that with our average bodily and mental structures, and their several sensibilities, there is more in the world to wound than to gratify; one might still contend that the sum of human life is an excess not of painful, but of pleasurable experience. This paradoxical-looking proposition might very plausibly be argued, on the ground that a man's emotional life depends not only on the direct action of external impressions, but also on the reaction of the mind. itself. This shows itself in our common conceptions both of the future and of the past, both in ideal anticipation and in ideal recollection. In forecasting the future most persons are inclined to think of it as bright and gladsome, and to fix their thoughts on those circumstances which point to a happy development of things. In retrospection, again, the

healthy mind is disposed to overlook the painful, and to dwell on the pleasurable experiences of the past, and so to transform the reality into something brighter and more joyous. Nor does it appear that the pessimist is able to eradicate from us those seemingly normal instincts, for though they may easily lead to irrational views of real life, they also have a certain range of play within which reason has nothing to do. It cannot be shown to be irrational to prefer to recall the echoes of our laughter rather than those of our wailing, or to rest the eye on the bright rather than the dark possibilities of the future, if both seem equally certain or equally doubtful. Here, then, we have two grand vistas through which a mind, troubled by present pain, may look out on something agreeable and cheering. In early life, as Cicero has told us, we are wont to live in hope, in old age in memory. As a matter of fact, we believe there are many who when distressed find a real solace and an inspiring strength both in anticipating possible days of sunshine, and in living over again in imagination the pleasantest hours of the past. We know that weak and timid natures sometimes dread the future, instead of hailing it with smiling hope, and that all of us in moments of depression long eagerly to snatch back the fast receding past; but the fact remains that men and women with sufficient elasticity of spirit do, by means of this double outlook, considerably lessen the actual present miseries of life, and add to its primary series of pleasures a golden chain of ideal delights.

These two or three considerations may perhaps suffice to show that the pessimist's view of everyday life is far from being complete and accurate. Before he can establish the preponderance of suffering there are certain facts of life, and aspects of facts, as yet untouched by him, of which he must take account.

Does it fare better with his prophetic reading of the future? If we grant the amazing assumption that life to-day is on the average an excess of pain, does it follow that progress will never mend matters. Hartmann says that increase of intelligence will only make men more keenly alive to the fact that life is a futility and a wearing process of suffering. Perhaps so if this is an unalterable fact. But should one not first enquire whether the greater part of pain, mental as well as bodily, is not a pathological symptom, which might be got rid of by habits of life tending to the sustentation and promotion of health and its attendant elasticity of spirit? It is curious that in discussing what progress may effect in improving man's condition Hartmann does not allude to the grandest of all results, namely, the attitude of spirit with respect to the fortune of life which may be reached through a higher style of moral education and discipline. Even if material progress did not insure a vast amount of improvement in the external conditions of life (and this is hardly rendered doubtful by the foregoing style of argument), there would still remain the possibility of very considerably affecting the balance of weal and woe by altering the internal factor, namely, the

disposition, character, and will, on which hangs so much of our so-called good and ill luck.

This line of remark naturally leads us to the last and largest question which the pessimist forces us to consider. It seems clear that even Hartmann, while professing to base his depressing theory of life on an observation of facts, is really controlled by the pre-supposition that life must in its nature be a process of suffering. Both Schopenhauer and Hartmann in reality construe life by help not so much of facts as of their conception of the will. All conscious human life they say (like all other modes of existence) is the result of volition. We go on living and acting because we must will something. It is from this incessant desiring, this ever-renewed impulse of will, that our misery flows. No number of attainments of desired objects can ever do more than dull for a brief moment this restless and painful craving of this all-greedy will. Hence the one escape from the burthen of existence is the cessation of volition, the reduction of will through a kind of narcosis to a condition of perfect inactivity. Is this inference psychologically sound? Is there no way of conceiving a man's rising above the sea of troubles here described without ceasing to will, and even by a supreme exertion of will?

Man, says the pessimist, so long as he wills, is like a dissatisfied peevish child that clamours for all it sees, that soon tires of all which a good fortune allots it, and that is ever tormenting itself with cravings for the impossible or unattainable. In this very illustration we seem to detect the fallacy of the pessimist's view. We certainly should not look at such a fickle whimsical child as an illustration of will, but rather of the absence of will. The pessimists talk as though all desire were will, whereas it is one of the chief results of a development of will to restrain desires. Will, in its higher forms, may indeed be said to begin with a power of checking the impulse of the moment, or (as the physiologists word it) with a process of inhibition. The misery of this unlimited state of desire results not from an excess, but from a deficiency of will. We may assume that it is the object of will to attain the highest amount of happiness perceptible. If, then, the indulgence of vain and unsatisfiable desires is found to bring vexation and misery, a robust will, led by reflexion and reason, will stoutly resist such desires. Desire involves the imagination of some wished-for object, and our will is perfectly well able to check such desires by a wise control of those ideas and fancies which arise from time to time.

Now what will be the result of this higher development of will enlightened by knowledge? First of all, it will lead to a considerable diminution of the region of desire. It is the weak and foolish child just beginning to feel the largeness of the world that desires everything. The self-disciplined man confines his desires to a few objects which really lie within reach. He learns to entertain a modest view of life, and to satisfy himself with a moderate realisation of mundane felicity. In the second

place, this growth of a higher type of rational will is sure to be followed by a voluntary concentration of thought and effort on certain definite objects as conditions of happiness, instead of on the final end of happiness itself. We torment ourselves like unwise children by ever dwelling on felicity itself with its myriad individual hues of delight, as though this vast undefined region could be acquired by a day or two's exertion. By and bye we learn, as J. S. Mill learnt, that to think of happiness as the object of our effort is about the most certain way of losing it, and that the one safe method of reaching felicity is to fix on some particular line of action which is interesting in itself, and fairly certain of leading to some considerable amount of gratification as its result, and to throw ourselves heartily and cheerfully into this. Let a man select a style of life and a mode of occupation which best suit his individual tastes, and which are certain (provided he can concentrate his energy on them) to afford him a fair amount of satisfaction, and the conditions of a moderate degree of happiness are secured.

It may perhaps be worth while to point out how progress in moral culture will assist in securing this modestly conceived type of happiness. In the first place, there is nothing which so much tends to cure the mind of extravagant notions respecting individual felicity as a wide and intimate sympathy with others. Where this feeling is fully developed and constantly present, a person learns habitually to compare his own fortune with that of others, and to estimate the degree of his own happiness by the standard of average life. He finds a positive satisfaction in putting himself on a level with others, and in recognising that he has his just share of life's enjoyments. Esteeming the happiness of others as a thing no less good than his own, he draws a real pleasure from the reflection that others are as happy as himself, and that his good fortune does not lift him above the level of the common human lot.

In the second place, it is to be remarked that morality supplies an object of human effort which is pre-eminently fitted to be the condition of a permanent satisfaction. We may not be able to afford others any more than ourselves an unbounded happiness, or even to compass any lofty achievement of virtue. On the other hand, our daily duty provides us with a point for concentrated effort, which is always attainable, and is certain to afford an ever-renewed satisfaction. Whatever our theory of the basis on which the validity of morality rests, we must agree that the fulfilment of life's duties by its very nature yields a permanent gratification, not exciting indeed, but none the less deep and precious. The impulse to do the right thing, renewed each day and each hour, has nothing in it of wild restless craving, but is the calm direction of effort to something near at hand and certainly attainable. Hence to associate the sense of duty with all the occupations of life is to give them one element of value of which no fluctuations of chance can disappoint us. A will supremely guided by a sentiment of fidelity to duty is thus certain of an ever-renewed, that is of a permanent, satisfaction.

Such then are some of the most obvious objections which may be brought against the pessimist's method of estimating human life. Its measure of happiness is eminently indefinite; it accentuates certain facts, while overlooking others of essentially equal importance; and finally it reposes on a conception of human nature and will, which is in plain contradiction to psychological facts. If this is so we need not plague ourselves any further with so unedifying a creed. As we have said, it is natural for healthy men to believe in the possibility of happiness, so that the onus probandi of the question really rests on the pessimist's shoulders. If Berkeley's arguments for idealism, commonly admitted to be unanswerable, fail to upset our instinctive belief in a world beyond our perceptions, we may feel pretty sure that such a style of argument as that just examined will not seriously disturb the conviction of a normal mind that life is good and worth enjoying. On the contrary, in the face of such flagrant omissions and inaccuracies of argument, we may dismiss the gloomy suspicion which the pessimist may for a moment have awakened in our minds, and turn back to life reconciled and smiling, assured that, whatever it withholds, it will not fail to bestow some gifts it were not well to miss.

At the same time, while pessimism as a complete theory of life is absurdly inadequate, it is by no means devoid of value. In its relation to all older forms of practical teaching of the satirical sort, it is not only forcible in itself but is peculiarly well adapted as a corrective to certain modern modes of thought. It is well perhaps that we should not colour our picture of life too warmly, and the pessimist does no doubt preach a truth which all who desire to see things in their reality will do well to heed. Just now, too, when current modes of speaking and writing are very apt to exaggerate the blessings of civilisation and modern culture, we must look on the pessimist's account of contemporary society as a wholesome even if greatly overstated counter-truth. The world is not yet a bed of roses for any of us, and the majority find it sufficiently hard to make a pleasant couch of it at all. Hence we must not fondly imagine that "progress" is rapidly doing everything for us, and that there are hardly any more evils to be redressed. Once more, when the pessimist exposes the superficiality of a great part of modern fashionable amusements, and with bitter cynical laugh brings to light the deep-lying discontent and mental vacuity which are so often at the root of the present desire for "society," we would cordially greet his message as a muchneeded word of wisdom. It is only too true that we are all liable to miss the best possibilities of life, and to mistake a fleeting mirage of happiness for the true substance, and we cannot be reminded too often or with too much force of satire that it is the part of a sane man to abstain from all exciting but illusory visions of preternatural felicity.