262 HUMANISM 



XIV 



beautiful or true, and in which the hope of happiness was 

 nothing but illusion ? To say that the prospect of such 

 a world would reduce us to the most despairing depths of 

 the most abject Pessimism hardly depicts the full horror of 

 the situation : it would be a world of which the hopelessness 

 would disarm even the suicide s hand. For, in a world 

 which had really renounced its allegiance to the ideal, all 

 action would be paralysed by the conviction that nothing 

 we desired could ever be attained, because the existent was 

 irreconcilably alienated from the desirable. The foundations 

 of the cosmos would be shattered, and we should have to 

 realise that nothing is worth doing because nothing has 

 any worth, because human valuations have no significance 

 in establishing the nature of things. We should be 

 plunged, in other words, in that unfathomable abyss 

 where Scepticism fraternises with Pessimism, and they 

 hug their miseries in chaos undisguised. 



(4) We can reject, then, the principle on which the 

 ethical postulate of immortality rests only at the cost of 

 entire Scepticism and utter Pessimism. By those not 

 prepared to pay that price the principle must be accepted, 

 like the other assumptions that render the world a fit 

 sphere for the satisfaction of other human activities. 

 Take, for instance, the assumption that the world is a 

 knowable cosmos. Is this proved ? Certainly not ; nor 

 can it be until everything is known : until then it always 

 remains possible that the world may not turn out really 

 knowable at the last. Can we avoid assuming it ? 

 Certainly not ; without it we could not take a single step 

 towards any science or practice. We simply must assume 

 that the world is an intelligible world, if we are to live in 

 it. As a matter of fact we do assume it, all except a few 

 who bury their dissent in the seclusion of the madhouse. 

 Is the assumption confirmed ? Yes, in the only way in 

 which such fundamental assumptions ever are confirmed : 

 the further we trust it the more we know, the more 

 confident in it we grow. 



The assumption of a moral cosmos is made and 

 confirmed in the same way. We cannot prove it to be 



