THE NEW OPTIMISM 503 



which belongs to the healthy body. Pessimism is the mental reflex 

 of disturbed function, sometimes of the nerves, commonly of the liver 

 or kidneys. 



Then, secondly, pessimism comes in part from the over-seriousness 

 and over-sensitiveness of the age, the incidental accompaniment of what 

 we have called the adolescent stage in the development of human con- 

 sciousness. The childhood of the race has past. We have become self- 

 conscious, reflective, conscientious, a little careworn. The boyish, rol- 

 licking, happy-go-lucky abandon and exuberance of spirit exhibited in 

 the writings of Shakespeare's times are absent now. In those days 

 social conditions were relatively bad and comforts few, yet they did not 

 care so much. They did not take life too seriously. They ate, drank, 

 laughed, and died when their time came. Now we worry more. 

 "Writers like Tolstoi take life very seriously. Conditions in Eussia are 

 no doubt bad, but they are not worse than they have been and they are 

 not sufficiently bad to fill a man's soul with such bottomless gloom as 

 they did the soul of Tolstoi. His was an extreme case of the over- 

 sensitiveness and over-conscientiousness of the age. He was unhappy 

 because he had bread when others hungered, a condition which in former 

 times has usually been the occasion of rejoicing. Our own sins and the 

 sins of our legislators, our political leaders, and our masters of capital 

 lie like an incubus on our spirits. 



Thus we have already anticipated the third ground of pessimism. 

 It is that we compare our present condition not with the past but with 

 the ideal future, or rather with an ideal state which consciousness itself 

 creates. Our physical condition, could it have been foreseen by Francis 

 Bacon, would have seemed a veritable paradise. But we are not happy. 

 Our workmen have better wages and fewer hardships than ever work- 

 men had before, yet they are not satisfied. The New Atlantis is ever 

 in the future. Thus, we come back to the position already indicated, 

 that human consciousness is a wellspring of progress. It creates ideals 

 and it is with these ideals that we compare our present attainments and 

 pronounce them imperfect. This is what makes progress possible. It 

 is the eternal unrest, the eternal aspiration of the human mind, which 

 is never satisfied with the good, but urges us ever forward to something 

 better. 



We often hear reference made to "political unrest," as if it were 

 some inherent social defect, a mere petulant, purposeless fault finding. 

 But it is not a defect. It is the voice of progress proclaiming its dis- 

 content with the present and demanding improvement; not an idle but 

 a rational discontent, recognizing the real evils of the times and per- 

 ceiving more or less clearly the direction of the upward way. What, 

 therefore, appears as pessimism is really the ground of the highest opti- 

 mism. There is no static happiness, no happiness of mere content and 

 satisfaction. What we require is growth, movement, struggle, aspira- 

 tion, conquest. 



