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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



Wertherian melancholy was only adopted for its 

 aesthetically beautiful, dark cloak. He, if we may 

 use the word, had lived himself into that melan- 

 choly, because he admired it; but it did not 

 spring from those deep physical and social condi- 

 tions from which the modern melancholy springs. 

 His romantic lamentations and invectives were 

 the outbursts of a too great energy and vital 

 force, not the apathetic reasonings of to-day's 

 pessimist. He felt Weltschmerz ; our pessimist 

 professes to be indifferent. He pointed out the 

 causes of his woe, for they lay not in himself. 

 He was like the philosopher, who says, " That is 

 not the way to cognition," and not like the skep- 

 tic, who says, " There is no way to cognition.'' 

 He was what Carlyle would call a "worshiper 

 of sorrow," who waged internecine warfare with 

 the "time-spirit; " while the other, our pessimist, 

 combats against the whole spirit, because he feels 

 himself a child of his time. The misanthrope 

 loves man and hates men. 



How different is it at present from what the 

 romantic idealist's life was then ! The admiration 

 for the poor, threadbare-coated poet or philoso- 

 pher has disappeared. What was formerly a 

 source of pride is now the opposite. The writer 

 himself knows a German poet of great worth and 

 repute, who is not treated by society with the 

 honor due to him, because he is not in the posi- 

 tion to offer expensive hospitality to his friends, 

 while others, acknowledged to be smaller, are the 

 lions of the day. To-day, young idealist, your 

 genius will not suffice. You must be a business- 

 man, and make money, and wear a new coat, and 

 cut your hair short, like every one else, or you 

 will be laughed at; for a schwdrmer is out of 

 fashion. This kills the very idealism which he 

 needs. He finds all romance ridiculed. Like Ham- 

 let, he is not understood by his surroundings, 

 and so becomes indifferent toward the outer 

 world, a despiser of mankind, as Schopenhauer 

 was. Whither, in his distress, does he fly with 

 his idealism ? Not to his home, nor to his family, 

 nor to his maiden, for he has them not. Into 

 himself! Here he buries all his treasures. Here 

 there is no Griinderschwindel, no insolence of of- 

 fice, no law's delay: here he who was wont to 

 float on the high paths of idealism need not stoop 

 down and pick up the tiny piece of copper that 

 lies in the dust on the road-side, and that buys 

 bread. Here he is lord, and he revels in the feel- 

 ing : " Everything is bad , only I am good (for he 

 who can see the bad must stand outside it)." 

 This is, probably unknown to themselves, the 

 basis of all their pessimist reasoning. Pessimism 



is the highest stage of romanticism. Only he is 

 nihilist who has done away with all desires of 

 life, who has relinquished everything, because 

 to him everything must be nothing. No one is 

 more in need of fullness than he who feels the 

 universal emptiness. No one is more in need of 

 the world than he who weeps for it or inveighs 

 against it. The only true nihilist is the in- 

 different and the laugher, the blase and the sati- 

 rist ; but the pessimist is the schwdrmer par ex- 

 cellence. Both optimism and pessimism are, so to 

 say, forms of motion, while nihilism is stagnation. 

 Optimism and pessimism are like plus and minus, 

 while nihilism is the only zero. 



Prom the social circumstances which we have 

 enumerated, there flow two consequences which 

 form the alternative — either, as often in France, 

 a cynical callousness, or the German pessimism. 

 Pessimism is, on the practical side of philosophy, 

 what skepticism is on the theoretical. Both are 

 merely points of transition in the development of 

 mind, and are proofs of the still-living energy in 

 man : they are the shaking off of lethargy, and, 

 if the first plunge is chill and sharp and painful, 

 a pleasant healthy glow will be the result. A 

 nation shows its energy, its power of living, just 

 when it is not indifferent or blase, but pessimistic. 

 And the pessimism of to-day is very short-lived : 

 everywhere one sees attempts to combat it, even 

 out of the very camp of pessimism — attempts, 

 that is, to remedy it. The act of reflecting upon 

 it is already a sign that its end is near. These 

 attempts at remedying are generally directed in 

 the first place against this dry state of social artifi- 

 ciality: " Back to Nature " is the cry ; "Rousseau 

 redivivus ! " Look at the purport of Wagner's 

 " Tristan and Isolde," " Nibelungen," etc., of 

 Heyse's novels (and we are told that Gutzkow's 

 newest novel, "Die neuen Serapionsbriider," has 

 the same purport). All seem to say: "Fling 

 away your cold, dry, unnatural laws of society, for 

 these only kill true human feeling and individu- 

 ality. To be human is no sin : it is the best vir- 

 tue man can have. Humanity is no ugly thing, 

 to be trampled out ; it is the highest and most 

 beautiful product of Nature. Let us have human- 

 ity pure and simple." To use a bold personifi- 

 cation, we may say that it is a fine instinct of his- 

 tory to put forth new reformatory truths in the 

 thickest an4 most striking colors, so that they at 

 first pain the eye, but at least must be seen. One 

 does well in practising a very long jump in order 

 that a much smaller chasm may be overleaped. 

 Every great and sublime truth or fact (and that is 

 the nature of sublimity) must at first awaken a 



