50 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



effect : Man, that is born of a woman is of few days, and 

 full of trouble. Swift and Hume emerge out of the flood 

 of eighteenth- century optimism, and in their old age both 

 Voltaire and Darwin cast off the pleasant illusions of their 

 manhood. There are few to whom the world appears at 

 all times a place of torment, and fewer still for whom it 

 remains a paradise after the glowing colours of youth are 

 faded. Ultimately the determination is given, not by 

 rational calculation, but by the condition, at the time, of 

 the nervous system. When that is vigorous, the decision 

 is favourable, when depressed, adverse ; and in both cases 

 we are blind to circumstances that contradict the ruling 

 tendency. The views of every individual are liable to 

 violent oscillations. A man who lies awake during the 

 small hours of the morning when vitality is low is apt to 

 be oppressed by a conviction of imminent disaster : a few 

 hours later, the same man refreshed, and strenuous, sees 

 nothing in the future but happiness. 



It might perhaps be thought that existence was really 

 pleasant to those who were in a condition to think well of 

 it, and painful to those who were not, and that the actual 

 value corresponded for every man with his own valuation. 

 If that were indeed the case, a decision might be obtained 

 by a mere counting of heads, which, while it had objective 

 validity for the human race as a whole, would leave the 

 individual judgements unaffected. But there are two objec 

 tions. In the first place, even depression does not always 

 mean unhappiness, but very often a lower level both of 

 painful and pleasurable excitement. The Hindu peasant 

 has perhaps fewer excitements of both kinds than his 

 fellow in other countries, and he is a confirmed pessimist ; 

 but he is not unhappy, or even discontented. Again, though 

 the assertion may at first sound paradoxical, there is no 

 surer source of happiness than a firm conviction of the 

 worthlessness of life. This conviction of the vanity of 

 human wishes is the secret alike of the imperturbability 

 of the Stoic and of the sense of superiority which fills the 

 Epicurean when he feels himself lifted above the seething 



