OPTIMISTIC REASONING 231 



and cricketers, honest men and thieves, quiet peace- 

 able people and Cabinet Ministers — dozens at a 

 time ! Would that change our ideas, at all, I 

 wonder ? Would it modify popular conceptions of 

 the Deity ? Would it make optimists less assured, 

 pessimists less *' shallow"? Or would it do 

 nothing ? Would Tennyson, till he was gobbled, 

 still go on " trusting " ? and would the very thing 

 itself, that appeared so all wrong, be taken as evi- 

 dence that it was, really, all right ? This last, I feel 

 sure, would be the case. How many a song has 

 been sung to that old, old tune, and what a mass 

 of such " evidence " there is ! Historians are never 

 tired of it — the Hunnish invasion, the end of the 

 Peloponnesian war, the conquest of everybody by 

 Rome, and then, again, the conquest of Rome by 

 everybody : all right, all for the best, if you start 

 with being an optimist, that is to say, with a cheerful 

 constitution — a good thing, certainly, but mistaken 

 by many for a good argument. True it is that 

 disasters, almost, or even quite, as great as the above, 

 do sometimes overtake humanity, upon this earth 

 of ours ; but they are, both, less frequent, as I sup- 

 pose, than with the ants, and the great difference is, 

 that, with us, there is no woodpecker, its part being 

 taken by inanimate nature, or by ourselves, to whom 

 we are partial. Yet I know not why a scheme that 

 is well for one, or for a few only, should be thought 

 a good scheme, all through, and the reason why we, 

 as a species, are not as ants to woodpeckers, is not 

 that nature is too pitiful, but that we are too strong, 

 and woodpeckers not strong enough — which is not 

 a satisfactory reason. 



