496 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



pessimism. The fundamental things in our psychic life are not thought, 

 deliberation, judgment, nor yet pleasure and pain, but rather, will, 

 impulse, restless striving, love, aspiration, progress. It is only when 

 these fundamental things are checked and one is forced to think and 

 feel and examine one's feelings, that pessimism arises. Pleasures un- 

 earned are no guaranty of inward peace. As President Jordan says : 



There is no permanent state of happiness. Its joys must be won afresh 

 with each new happy day. What we get we must earn, if it is to be really ours. 



But now let us examine more carefully some of the aspects of the 

 new optimism and some of the grounds upon which it rests. In this 

 new philosophy of life, man is the central and determining figure. He 

 can make the world good. This is a new thought in the history of 

 optimism. We are not blind to the evils and the miseries of life, but 

 we are conscious of a new inner force which can relieve them and 

 redeem them. The old optimism said, Cheer up, for the world is good 

 and beautiful. The new optimism says, Cheer up, for you can make 

 the world good and beautiful. This view is a part of the powerful reac- 

 tion which has been taking place for many years against the mechanical 

 philosophy of life which prevailed in the latter part of the nineteenth 

 century under the influence of Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin. 

 It came to be generally believed at that time that the world is merely 

 a redistribution of matter and motion, that mechanical laws are suffi- 

 cient to account for every phase of human life, including mental, moral 

 and social phenomena, that at certain stages of organic evolution con- 

 sciousness appears as a kind of by-product having no agency in the life 

 drama itself, and that it is not necessary to take any account of it in 

 explaining life, whether in its physiological, psychological or social 

 aspects. 



But now this disheartening philosophy is buffeted from every side, 

 not more from the side of the psychologists and sociologists than from 

 that of the biologists themselves. Grave doubts are cast upon the adequacy 

 of natural selection to explain either the products or the direction of 

 evolution, and it is now believed that there is some other determining 

 factor which is spoken of now as consciousness, now as an initiatory 

 psychic energy working towards definite ends, now as a vital impulse, 

 a wellspring of progress or an original profound cosmic force. Whether 

 consciousness itself be this original cosmic force, or whether, as some 

 believe, it is a product of evolution, makes little difference in our prob- 

 lem, for human consciousness is here present in the world and it is a 

 power which is changing not only the very face of the earth, but chang- 

 ing the direction of evolution itself. It would appear that conscious- 

 ness has at this time reached a sort of adolescent or rapid growth stage 

 in its development in which it has become conscious of its own powers, 

 and this consciousness of itself increases tenfold its inherent force. We 

 are, indeed, surrounded by mystery. Life is a puzzle and we may or 



