Caklile. — On the Ultimate Problem of Philosophy. 85 



Perhaps the greatest difficulty that presents itself to the 

 acceptance of this conclusion is that which flows from the 

 doctrine of the equivalence of opposites. It needs little reflec- 

 tion to discover that the biblical conception of the knowledge 

 of good as having entered the world together with the know- 

 ledge of evil shadows forth a truth of wide-spreading signifi- 

 cance. It is plain enough that the hero and the martyr 

 could never have appeared in the world without the tyrant 

 and the bigot. The delights of success for one man must, 

 it always seems, bear a tolerably exact proportion to the 

 agony of possible disappointmeiat for himself, and of real 

 disappointment for others similarly situated. If by wdiat 

 we fancy as the fiat of Omnipotence pain were at once 

 completely done away with, we might find that the principle 

 of consciousness, perhaps of vitality itself, had perished. 

 We are thus sometimes driven to question the very possi- 

 bility, in the nature of things, of any fuller realisation of 

 happiness in the world than we find there now. It must 

 be conceded, I think, that the negative principle must al- 

 ways be manifested there in some shape. Without the pos- 

 sibility of disappointment there could be no such thing as 

 the serious pursuit of any purpose, and the possibility of 

 disappointment itself involves pain, and pain often of the 

 acutest sort. It may be that we are dreaming altogether idly 

 in dreaming of a painless golden age ahead of us. This much, 

 however, is observable : that the negative principle can assume 

 very different forms in different stages of the world's develop- 

 ment. In nature, the only remedy for failure or imperfection 

 is the prompt destruction of the forms that manifest defects. 

 When consciousness dawns, the place of destruction can be 

 taken by the instinctive association of pain with what is in- 

 jurious. With the civilised man, again, the mental represen- 

 tation of pain — say of starvation — some time in the future can 

 take the place of the actual pangs of hunger in the present. 

 A further stage sees the approval of our fellows largely substi- 

 tuted for every other motive of action. The worst of all pains 

 for us, then, is to be found in the fact of being shunned and 

 despised by our neighbours ; and, at a still further stage, 

 we can feel that even this is endurable so long as we are 

 not forced to agree with our neighbours in detesting and 

 despising ourselves, that being the one pain at all hazards 

 to be avoided. If thus even we are forced to hold that pain 

 can never be got rid of, there is ample room for the ameliora- 

 tion of the world in the substitution of the more refined for the 

 grosser forms of it. 



Out of such reflections on the nature of pain there dawns 

 dimly on us the suspicion that we may be in error in the 

 fancy that Omnipotence could make all men happy and 



