DEVELOPMENT OF PLEASURE AND PAIN 53 



depress his immediate neighbours ; cast into the form of 

 a philosophy, and published abroad, it may affect the collec 

 tive beliefs of a nation. 



An unfair advantage is given to optimism by .our dis 

 position to avoid unpleasant subjects. The bare suggestion 

 of ill luck is an offence against good manners. Among the 

 Greeks ill omens came from the left, and that hand was 

 therefore spoken of as the best or the well-named . 

 With the Romans, on the contrary, the left was the side 

 from which good omens came : they had no motive for 

 disguise, and knew the left hand by its vernacular designa 

 tions as laeva or sinistra. On the joys of life we are 

 always willing to dwell in our thoughts and in our con 

 versation : of its graver ills we seldom dare either to think 

 or to speak. With this may be linked the delusive light 

 which is thrown on their objects by our feelings of attraction 

 and repulsion. All that we strongly desire is far more 

 beautiful and more admirable to us than a cool judgement 

 would allow, and all that we fear or hate more absolutely 

 bad. By themselves, if objects of attraction and repulsion 

 were approximately equal in number and force, the errors 

 would cancel one another, but by excluding one class from 

 our thoughts, and dwelling by preference on the other, we 

 throw nearly the whole weight of the delusion on to the 

 side of optimism. 



Having indicated the more important of the disturbing 

 influences against which we must be on our guard, we may 

 next proceed to define more closely what our problem is. 

 Up to this point we have followed precedent in using the 

 terms good and evil, but what actually engages the attention 

 when it deals with the subject is almost invariably the 

 balance of pleasure and pain. Pessimists and optimists 

 both start with the postulate that life is a blessing or a curse, 

 according as the average consciousness accompanying it is 

 pleasurable or painful. l Now it is possible that the alge- 

 donic equation and the ethical may coincide ; but this is not 

 a general conviction, and unless they do, pleasure and good 

 1 H. Spencer, Data, p. 45. 



