MODERN PESSIMISM AND OPTIMISM 29 



physical and moral conditions, and finally converge 

 to practically the same end. 



The Yedas and Homeric epos set before us a 

 world of rich and vigorous life, full of joyous fighting 



men 



That ever with a frolic welcome took 

 The thunder and the sunshine .... 



and who were ready to brave the very Gods themselves 

 when their blood was up. A few centuries pass 

 away, and under the influence of civilization, the 

 descendants of these men are ' sicklied o'er with the 

 pale cast of thought ' frank pessimists, or at best, 

 make-believe optimists. The courage of the warlike 

 stock may be as hardly tried as before, perhaps more 

 hardly, but the enemy is self. The hero has become 

 a monk. The man of action is replaced by the 

 quietist, whose highest aspiration is to be the passive 

 instrument of the divine Reason. By the Tiber, 

 as by the Ganges, ethical man admits that the 

 cosmos is too strong for him ; and destroying every 

 bond which ties him to it by ascetic discipline, he 

 seeks salvation in absolute renunciation. ( 1S ) 



Modern thought is making a fresh start from the 

 base whence Indian and Greek philosophy set out ; 

 and, the human mind being very much what it was 

 six and twenty centuries ago, there is no ground for 

 wonder if it presents indications of a tendency to 

 move along the old lines to the same results. 



We are more than sufficiently familiar with modern 

 pessimism, at least as a speculation ; for I cannot 



